Today is the feast day of Saint Padarn

Saint Padarn Born c.490, was a native of Brittany who settled in Wales as a monk. He founded a monastery at Llanbadarn Fawr near Aberystwyth, becoming its first bishop, serving for twenty-one years as a man of prayer and self-denial. He is said to have made a pilgrimage to Rome and also to Jerusalem with St David and St Teilo.

Born this day 1943 in Norwich (her grandmother was Welsh and she was brought up in Llansamlet),

Ruth Madoc, actress and singer, born Ruth Llewellyn. She is best known for her roles as Gladys Pugh in the television comedy Hi de Hi, and as Dafydd Thomas's mother in the series Little Britain. Her first husband was the actor, Phillip Madoc.

Born this day 1815 in Duffryn, Aberdare,

Henry Austin Bruce, 1st Baron Aberdare, who as Liberal Home Secretary 1868–1873 was responsible for the Licensing Act 1872, which made magistrates the licensing authority, introduced harsh penalties for rowdiness in public-houses and curtailed the number of hours for the sale of drink. In 1888 he established the Official Table of Drops, specifying how far a person should be dropped when hanged for a capital offence, to ensure an instant and painless death.

The Rhydspence Inn, a 14th-century drovers inn situated on the Wales- England border, demonstrates an interesting anomaly of the licensing laws. It is said that the border runs through the pub and that when Wales was a dry country on a Sunday people used to stand at the English end of the bar for a drink.

Born this day 1954 in Pentre, Rhondda,

Alan Curtis, a former Wales soccer international, who is best remembered as a regular member of the Swansea City side that gained promotion to the First Division in 1980-81 and finished in 6th position the following season. He is now a first team coach at Swansea City as well as being a part of the Wales Under 21 coaching team.

Born on this day 1878 in Beulah, near Newcastle Emlyn, Cardiganshire,

Owen Thomas Jones, the geologist who dedicated his working life to the study of Welsh geology and published a paper identifying the Welsh source of the bluestones of Stonehenge as the Preseli Mountains.

Born on this day 1881 at Pendinas, Tregarth near Bangor.

Sir Ifor Williams, the academic who specialised in the study of Old Welsh, particularly early Welsh poetry.

Williams had an avid interest in Welsh place-names, publishing Enwau Lleoedd ("Place Names") in 1945, a text which is still very much in use today .

His main field of interest was Old Welsh and the earliest Welsh Poetry. He published Canu Llywarch Hen in 1935, then in 1938, possibly his most significant work, Canu Aneurin, which has provided the foundation for all subsequent work on this poetry. Canu Taliesin in 1960 examined the work of the other 6th-century poet Taliesin.

Old Welsh refers to the Welsh language from about 800 AD until the early 12th century. An earlier period, when Welsh became distinct from Common Brythonic in the 6th century is referred to as "Primitive" or "Archaic Welsh".

Many poems and some prose have been preserved from this period, for example, the text of y Gododdin, a poem describing events in the kingdom of Gododdin (the area known as Yr Hen Ogledd -modern south-east Scotland and north-east England). The oldest surviving text entirely in Old Welsh is probably that on a gravestone now in Tywyn church in Gwynedd, thought to date from the 7th century.

On 16th April 2006 , the first Welsh International Harp Festival opened at Caernarfon, featuring a wide range of music played on different types of harp, including Triple harps, Celtic harps, African Kora and Ku-cheng from China.

The harp originated in Mesopotamia, and the instrument has been adopted by cultures throughout the world in a variety of forms, but in Wales there are more harps per head of population than anywhere; it is considered to be our national instrument.

Born on this day 1922 in Neath,

Rees Stephens, a Welsh international number 8 who played club rugby for Tonmawr RFC and Neath . He was capped on 32 occasions for Wales and played for the British Lions on the 1950 tour of Australia and New Zealand.