Chepstow Railway Bridge was used for the first time on 19 July 1852, allowing the Great Western Railway to open its line from London to Swansea.

The "Great Tubular Bridge" by Isambard Kingdom Brunel is considered to be one of his greatest engineering achievements, as the span of 300 feet needed to be self supporting. This is because on the Monmouthshire side there is sedimentary deposit subject to daily flooding, and the height requirement of 84 feet above high water required by the Admiralty to allow free passage of vessels ruled out an arched bridge. As a result, Brunel designed the bridge to be suspended by chains from two 9 foot diameter cast iron tubes.

Born this day 1958 in Bangor

Angharad Tomos - prominent author and a relentless Welsh language activist, Tomos has made a substantial contribution to Welsh language children's literature,  including her popular Rwdlan series.  She is a former chairwoman of Cymdeithas yr Iaith.

Swansea University researchers have reconstructed the face of a Welsh archer who drowned on the Mary Rose in 1545.

The Mary Rose, a warship of King Henry VIII, last saw action on 19 July 1545, leading an attack on a French invasion fleet. She sank shortly afterward off Portsmouth, but in 1982 she was raised from the seabed and the skull of one the drowned men was taken taken to Swansea university for analysis. There, University researchers and a Swedish police expert in facial reconstruction reconstructed the skull, muscle by muscle, and created a 3D computer-generated image. They identified him as an elite archer and as it is known that many of Henry's archers came from Wales, it is very likely that this is the face of a Welsh archer.  The artefact is on display in the Mary Rose museum in Portsmouth.  

On 19 July 1984 an earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale (the largest recorded onshore quake in the UK) struck the Llyn Peninsula.  The effects were felt throughout Wales and most of England, the biggest concentration of damage being in Liverpool, with the aftershocks felt as far away as Dublin.

The Llyn peninsula is known locally as the "Dragon's Tail" as it is so prone to earth tremors. It forms part of a band of seismic activity that spans the north west of England, north Wales and Scotland.  This could be the result of plate-tectonic activity under the Atlantic Ocean and could also reflect the fact that this area was covered in thick ice 20 millennia ago. Although the ice has melted, the release of its weight is still causing contractions in the earth's crust.