The legend of Madog discovering America over three hundred years before Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas on October 12th 1492. 

According to the story, Madog was a Prince of Gwynedd, who in 1170 sailed westward across the Atlantic and landed on the American shore. He returned to Gwynedd to recruit settlers and left, never to be seen again. The settlers supposedly travelled up the great rivers before settling down in the Midwest and intermarrying with a Native American tribe.

References to Madog discovery of America; 

*  A site on Rose Island, Kentucky, is claimed as once being home to a colony of  Welsh-speaking Indians.

*   The references to a seafaring Madog were used during the Elizabethan era to bolster British claims in America. The earliest surviving account to make the claim that Madog had come to America appears in Humphrey Llwyd's unpublished 1559 Cronica Walliae. John Dee then used this manuscript when he submitted a treatise the "Title Royal" to Queen Elizabeth in 1580  

* During the first English navigation of the James River in 1607, Welshman Peter Wynne, wrote that some of the pronunciation of the Monacan language resembled "Welch".

*  Another encounter with a Welsh-speaking Indian was claimed by the Reverend Morgan Jones, who said that he had been captured in 1669 by a tribe of Tuscarora called the Deog, whose chief spared his life when he heard Jones speak Welsh, a language he understood.

*  Francis Lewis, a signer of the American Declaration of Independence is said to have had a conversation with an Indian chief who spoke Welsh,

*  Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States believed the "Madoc story" to be true.

*  Llewellyn Harris, the missionary who visited the Zuni tribe in 1878, wrote that they had many Welsh words in their language. 

The Battle of Hatfield Chase was fought on 12th October 633, near Doncaster.  It resulted in a decisive victory for an alliance of Gwynedd and Mercia led by Cadwallon ap Cadfan and Penda against Northumbria led by Edwin.

The period following the collapse of Roman rule in Britain  left the Celtic Britons to fend for themselves.  There appears to have been an on-going struggle for territory as kingdoms wrestled and allied themselves with other kingdoms, to define their borders.  In the area we now know as Wales, apart fom the internal conflict between the indigineous kingdoms, they had to deal with incursions from the Irish and the emerging threat of the Anglo Saxon expansion from what is now England.  In particular, the areas of Powys, Gwent and Gwynedd were constantly threatened by the Anglo Saxon kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex.  The Battle of Hatfield Chase is typical of the inter-kingdom rivalry of the time.

A timeline of significant events in the build up to and the aftermath of The Battle of Hatfield Chase;

c.623 - Edwin is baptised at the Royal Court of Gwynedd.

625 - King Cadfan of Gwynedd dies and his son Cadwallon ap Cadfan succeeds him. 

c.626 -  A rivalry between Edwin  and Cadwallon, which has grown since childhood, reaches a climax.  Edwin invades and conquers large parts of Gwynedd, including Anglesey.  The defeated Cadwallon is besieged on Puffin Island (off Anglsey), from where he eventually flees to Brittany.

c.630 - The Battle of the Long Mountain (nr Welshpool)  King Penda of Mercia allies with Cadwallon who has returned from exile in Brittany and they re-take Gwynedd.  Cadwallon then marches to Northumbria and ransacks the kingdom.

633  Battle of Hatfield Chase - Cadwallon  in alliance with Penda, defeated and killed Edwin, which led to the temporary collapse of Northumbria and its division back into its constituent kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira.   Cadwallon then slayed both King Eanfrith of Bernicia and Osric of Deira rather than negotiate peace terms with them.  Oswald succeeded in Bernicia and Acha in Deira.

634  Battle of Heavenfield (Hexham, Yorkshire, close to Hadrians Wall)  Cadwallon marches a huge army north, up the old Roman road, Dere Street  into Northumbria to take on Oswald.  However, Cadwallon and his army were exhausted after their long journey and  Oswalds' men, alert and ready for the fight, siezed the initiative and despite being outnumbered, killed Cadwallan and defeated his army.

Born on this day 1921 in Tenby 

Kenneth Griffith - actor and documentary filmmaker.

Griffiths left school in 1937  and moved to Cambridge, taking a job at an ironmongers, weighing nails. This lasted only a day and proved to be the only job he ever had outside of the acting world as he then joined the Cambridge Festival Theatre  at the age of 16.  Griffith then volunteered for service with the RAF in 1939 and served during WWII.  In 1941, he made his debut in the first of more than 100 films in which he principally played character roles. such as Archie Fellows in The Shop at Sly Corner, the wireless operator Jack Phillips on board the Titanic in A Night to Remember (1958) and especially in the comedies of the Boulting brothers, including Private's Progress (1956) and I'm All Right Jack (1959).  He also portrayed the gay medic Witty in The Wild Geese (1978) and a whimsical mechanic in The Sea Wolves (1980).  More recently, he appeared in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain(1995).  Griffith also had many television roles such as in, Danger Man, The Prisoner, Minder, Lovejoy and "The Bus to Bosworth", where his personification of a Welsh schoolteacher out on a field trip won him many accolades.

In his personal life, Griffith was  a close friend of Peter O''Toole and was also a world authority on the Boer War.  He was very politically minded and held firm views against British imperialism.  He was President of a society for the emancipation of the Untouchables caste in India and an avid supporter of Sinn Fein.  His political views were reflected in some no-holds-barred documentaries about subjects such as Michael Collins, Winston Churchill, Cecil Rhodes and Napoleon Bonaparte.  His documentary work has been described as a world class, but his career did not reach its full potential due to his refusal to compromise on his political views.

Born on this day 1955 in Port Talbot

Brian Flynn -  former Wales soccer international, winning 66 caps and later manager of the Wales under 21 and senior sides.

The Testimony of Taliesin Jones first screened on 12th October 2000, is an international award-winning drama which tells the profoundly moving coming-of-age story of 12-year-old Taliesin Jones (John Paul MacLeod), who is discovering girls, is bullied at school and is struggling to get by at home. It is based on a novel of the same name by Rhydian Brook, an award-winning author from Tenby.

The film was shot almost entirely on location in Wales and includes scenes in Cwm Ifor School in Caerphilly with staff and pupils from St Cenydd School as extras.

Born on this day 1867 in St Brides Wentloog, Monmouthshire.

Lyn Harding  (real name David Llewellyn Harding) - stage, radio and film actor whose career spanned the transition from silent films to talkies. He is perhaps best remembered for his menacing portrayal of Professor Moriarty in the dramatisations of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Harding began working in Newport, as an apprentice draper but decided to pursue an acting career after giving Shakespearean readings in a Cardiff chapel.  Then an opportunist meeting in 1890, with a touring group of actors, led to his first professional role, deputising for a sick actor.  He then toured the country with the group, making his London  in 1897.

Over his career, he worked with many big name performers, such as Ralph Richardson, Anthony Quale and John Gielgud, making his final stage appearance aged 74, in the West End.  His last professional appearance was when aged 79 he played Owain Glyndwr in BBC radio's production of Shakespeare's Henry IV. 

On October 12th 1977, Wales went red with rage at possibly the greatest injustice ever in Welsh football history.

Wales were playing  Scotland at Anfield in a winner takes all World Cup qualifying match.  The atmosphere was electric and all Welsh football fans who were not present were glued to television and radio sets.  There was an air of nervous excitement that after years of disappointment and near misses that this Welsh team could finally deliver on the World stage.  With 12 minutes to go, the game was reaching a thrilling climax, with chances coming at both ends, as the two sides pushed for a winning goal. 

Then, referee Robert Wurtz awarded a penalty against Wales's Dave Jones for handball, Jones pleaded his innocence to the referee, all to no avail and the resulting successful penalty by Don Masson changed the dynamic of the game and ensured a Scottish victory.  However, television replays clearly showed that it was Scotland's Joe Jordan that had handled the ball from Asa Hartford's long throw.  But it was the image of Jordan claiming the penalty and then kissing the same, guilty hand  that lingers on in the minds of frustrated Welsh fans.

On 12th October 2003, The Friends of the Leinster held a service at Holyhead to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Leinster by a German U-boat.

RMS Leinster was serving as the Dún Laoghaire to Holyhead mailboat, when she was torpedoed and sunk on 10th October 1918, just outside Dublin Bay. Over 500 people perished in the sinking, the greatest single loss of life in the Irish Sea.