In August 1284, following the deaths of Llywelyn and Dafydd ap Gruffyd, King Edward I of England held court in the Welsh llys (royal court) at Abergwyngregyn.

The area first enters the history books in AD 60, when Suetonius Paulinus led twenty-five thousand men from their base on the bank of the river Dee to invade Anglesey, which was then the stronghold of the druids. The Roman soldiers forded the sands at this point and Tacitus later recorded the savage massacre of the local people that took place. The road that the Romans built linking Chester to Segontium (Caernarfon) looped round the garth.

The original name of the settlement was Garth Celyn and is positioned on a raised promontory of land on the fringe of Snowdonia, overlooking the Irish Sea with wide sweeping views across the Menai Strait to Anglesey and beyond. To the east of the Llys was the Cistercian Monastery of Aberconwy and to the west the cathedral city of Bangor.

About the year 1200, Prince Llywelyn ap Iorwerth made it his home as did his grandson Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. It is Garth Celyn that John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, travelled to in November 1282 to negotiate between Llywelyn and Edward. Llywelyn was offered a bribe - £1000 a year and an estate in England if he would surrender the Welsh Nation into the hands of the King. His refusal and his reasons for doing so, were dated from ‘Garth Kelyn’.

After the Anglo Norman Conquest, the name Garth Celyn continued in local use but was not used by the English administration. Instead the settlement Aber Garth Celyn adjacent to the royal home became officially known by the administrators simply as Aber, ‘Estuary’ with its identity removed and later replaced with Abergwyngregyn, ‘Estuary of the White Shells’. The Welsh royal home was occupied and became a Crown of England property: Edward and his entourage stayed there in 1283 and again in 1284, but from that time on no member of the English royal family again set foot on it and it gradually fell into ruin.

The 15th August is celebrated as V-J Day (Victory over Japan Day) the day in 1945 that Japan surrendered, effectively ending World War II.  However, the campaign to push the Japanese out of Burma was the longest and bloodiest of World War II.  This is emphasised by the following orders that were given to the Japanese soldiers.

'Continue in the task till all your ammunition is expended. If your hands are broken, fight with your feet. If your hands and feet are broken, fight with your teeth. If there is no breath left in your body, fight with your spirit. Lack of weapons is no excuse for defeat.'

Japan had long resented the British presence in the Far East and with Hitler  certain of victory in late 1941, they invaded Malaya and Burma to seize raw materials such as rubber and oil.  British staff officers ridiculed the idea that the Japanese could be a serious fighting force.and would be no match for a modern European army. Then came the brutally effective Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbour, on December 7, 1941.   Japanese bombers were in action again three days later, sinking the battleship “The Prince Of Wales” and the battle-cruiser Repulse in the South China Sea with the loss of about 1,000 men.  The news reverberated around the world and was followed almost immediately with humiliating news that Singapore had surrendered, which was followed by two and a half years of disaster and defeat for the British Army, as it retreated northwards through Burma in the face of a terrifying enemy.   The Japanese completed their advance through Burma by late May 1942 and virtually all the remaining Allied troops had retreated north over the Indian border.

However, in the end, Japanese industrial capacity simply could not sustain a long war and when Germany surrendered, the Allies were able to release all of their weaponry for the war in South-East Asia, which in August 1945, culminated with the devastating strikes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Born on this day 1856 in Holyton, near Motherwell, Scotland 

Kier Hardie, who was one of the Labour Party's founders and its first leader.   He became the MP for Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare  on 2nd October and was one of the two initial Labour Party MP's to sit in The Houses of Parliament.

Hardie came from a poor household and although he had no formal education, his parents taught him to read and write.  He began to work in the local coal mines and being a devout evangelical Christian and a supporter of  the temperance movement, he became skilled at public speaking. This then led to him becoming a spokesman for his colleagues in their disputes with management. However, this led to him being seen as an agitator and he was blacklisted by the management.  Hardie therefore began to work for the miners' union and this led to him being involved in many of the strikes of that time. He and his wife Lillie also ran a soup kitchen from their own home.

Originally a Liberal, Hardie  soon became disillusioned by the party's lack of emphasis on helping the working man and began to stand for parliament as an independent, being elected in 1892 as an MP for West Ham South in.  Then in 1893 he formed and became leader of the Independent Labour Party

In 1894 251 miners were killed after an explosion at a mine in Pontypridd and after his request for a message of condolence to be sent to the families of the berieved was refused  by parliament and a message of congratulation to Buckingham Palace on the birth of the future Edward VIII agreed, Hardie delivered a vitriolic attack on the monarchy, which resulted in him losing his seat at the next election in 1895.

Hardie spent the next five years laying the foundations of the future Labour Party and returned to parliament in 1900 as an MP for the Labour Representation Party, which in 1906 changed its name to the Labour Party, with Hardie becoming its first leader.

Hardie, a firm pacifist during World War One, battled all his life for the oppressed and under-privileged.  He was a supporter of female emancipation, home rule for India and the ending of segregation in South Africa.  However in 1915, worn out by his help for others, Hardie suffered a series of strokes and died. He was buried in his native Glasgow but has never been forgotten in Merthyr and Aberdare where he is still revered as Britain's first truly socialist MP.

Born on this day 1908 in Swansea

Wynford Vaughan-Thomas  CBE - newspaper journalist and radio and television broadcaster.

Picture is of a memorial to Wynford Vaugan Thomas, in Welsh slate on the slopes of Moel Fadian, one of his favourite locations, near the village of Aberhosan in Powys.  It highlights all 13 peaks in Wales above 3,000ft .

Thomas's mother Morfydd Lewis, was the daughter of Daniel Lewis who was one of the leaders of the Rebecca riots in Pontardulais.  He Was a contemporary  of Dylan Thomas at the Bishop Gore School, Swansea,before graduating from Oxford.  Thomas then joined the BBC and in 1937 gave the Welsh-language commentary on the Coronation of King George VI and during World War II, he established his name and reputation as one of the BBC's most distinguished war correspondants.  His most memorable report was from an RAF Lancaster bomber during a real bombing raid over Nazi Berlin. Other notable reports were from Lord Haw Haw's broadcasting studio and the Belsen concentration camp. Then in 1953 he was one of a team of BBC commentators on the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

In 1967, after leaving the BBC, he was one of the founders of Harlech TV, now ITV Wales, being appointed Director of Programmes, as a frequent TV broadcaster himself throughout his early career with the BBC he had adopted the required BBC accent of the time but employed his more natural native Welsh accent to even better effect in his later career. In May 1970, when President of the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales, he officially opened the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path.

Born this day 1951 in Tredegar

Berwyn Price -  former  Welsh  international athlete (110 metre hurdles).  Price was a double Olympian and won the gold medal at the 1978 Commonwealth Games.  He later became Head of Sports Tourism for Swansea and Assistant Director of Leisure for Swansea City Council.