Born this day 1934 in Hengoed, Rhymney Valley

Grenfell "Gren" Jones MBE , who was one of Wales’s best-known and longest-serving newspaper cartoonists.  Through his career, he produced an annual rugby calendar and also drew the cover for the Max Boyce album “We All Had Doctors’ Papers” and resultantly became  the first cartoonist to receive a gold disc.   He was voted best provincial cartoonist in Britain in 1983, 1985, 1986, and 1987.   

Executed this day 1483 at Pontefract Castle in West Yorkshire. 

Sir Thomas Vaughan , who was a Welsh statesman and Vaughan was accompanying Edward V and his brother Richard (The Princes in the Tower) from Ludlow to London when the party was intercepted by the future King Richard, who seized the boys and had Vaughan arrested and executed.

He was initially a Lancastrian supporter of Jasper Tudor and King Henry VI, but after Henry's defeat at Saint Albans in 1461 Vaughan sailed for Ireland with Henry's treasury, but was captured by French pirates, from whom he was surprisingly ransomed by Edward IV, after which Vaughan was loyal to Edward IV, who soon came to trust Vaughan and placed him in high offices. 

The story of Gordon Bennett's attempt to reach the North Pole in a tiny ship, built in a Welsh dockyard, is one of great courage and endurance.

The exclamation of surprise "Gordon Bennett" is named after him.

The 19th and early 20th centuries were a time of exploration and discovery,  pushing back the restrictions of the known world.  Exploration ships such as Discovery and Terra Nova are well known, but there were many, such as The Pandora, which  was launched from Pembroke Dockyard in 1861 and was used for a series of voyages to the Arctic in 1875 and 1876,   Then in 1877  she was sold to the rich and eccentric New York newspaper magnate Gordon Bennett. Who renamed her Jeanette and sent her on a trip to the North Pole through the Baring Strait, Under the command of Lt Commander George De Long in 1879.  Disaster struck when she became caught in the ice and For 18 months drifted northwards closer and closer to the pole.  During this time however they discovered and claimed the new islands of  Jeanette, Henrietta and Bennett for the United States.

On the morning of 13 June 1881, pressure of the ice began to crush the ship's hull, which split and the ship disappeared under the ice.  De Long and his men had to trek over the ice to the Siberian coast, pulling their supplies in the long boats they had rescued, behind them.  It was a hard and brutal journey but, just as they thought they had reached open water. they ran into a storm and one of the boats capsized and eight crewmen were drowned. The other two boats were separated in the gale.  In De Long's boat, sick in body and despairing in their hearts, the men died one after the other, De Long amongst them. Only two of the sailors managed to eventually reach safety.  In the other boat, Eleven men survived the elements to make it home.

Born this day 1910 in Quebec (his mother was Welsh)

Thomas Firbank author, farmer, soldier and engineer.

Following his father's death, he was raised among his mother's hill farming community in the Berwyn Mountains of North Wales.  His first book, an autobiography “I Bought a Mountain” became a major international best-seller. It describes how aged only 21, he bought Dyffryn Mymbyr farm, and painstakingly learnt how to farm, while portraying the beauty of Snowdonia. Firbank was a keen mountain walker, and the book includes a hair-raising account of how he and his two companions were possibly the first to ascend all of the Welsh 3000s, in less than 9 hours.  At the outbreak of World War II enlisted and saw action in North Africa, Italy and Arnhem, being awarded the Military Cross.

After his marriage ended, he generously gave his ex-wife Esme the farm in 1947, enabling her to remain there with her new partner. In 1967, she became an important founder member of the Snowdonia Society and after her death the farm was donated to the National Trust.  

On 13th June 1822, Sir William Lloyd (29 December 1782 – 16 May 1857) became one of the first Europeans to ascend a Himalayan peak.  

Born in Wrexham, the son of a banker, Lloyd went to school in Ruthin.  He joined the army of the East India Company in 1798, rising to the rank of major, before  journeying through the Himalayas, where single-handedly, he climbed the peak of Boorendo.  Lloyd was knighted in 1838 and retired to Bryn Estyn estate in Wrexham.