Wales is a Beautiful Country Trivia Quiz

Answer: David Lloyd George

David Lloyd George was the first Welshman to become UK Prime Minister. He was born in Manchester to Welsh parents in January 1863. They moved to Wales later that year and he was raised as a Welsh speaker. He became Prime Minister during World War I, in 1916, having been an MP since 1892.

Michael Heseltine was born in Swansea, Geoffrey Howe in Port Talbot. Despite his accent, Roy Jenkins was from Abersychan, the son of a miner.

Answer: Taekwondo

Jade Jones, from Denbighshire, was nicknamed 'The Headhunter' because of her preferred way of gaining points by kicks to opponents' heads. In the women's 57kg category final at the London 2012 Olympics she beat Hou Yuzhuo to win GB's first taekwondo gold.

Taekwondo was developed in Korea in the years following Japanese occupation. It was first made a demonstration event at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, becoming a full Olympic sport in the 2000 Sydney games.

Answer: Hanging, drawing and quartering

The Chartists' demands were considered extreme and dangerous to the British establishment - things like: giving the vote to all men over the age of 21; secret ballots for elections; and allowing Members of Parliament to sit without any hurdle of property ownership. They had huge public meetings and submitted a petition signed by over one and a quarter million that was ignored by the House of Commons. Following this rebuff, violence and arrests ensued.

In 1839 a band of several thousand Chartists, led by John Frost, marched on Newport, to take the town - by force, if necessary, although Frost maintained he was trying to keep the peace. They were met by soldiers at the Westgate Hotel. Shots were fired by both sides, and the Chartists were beaten back, with 20 of them dead and several injured.

Frost, William Jones and Zephaniah Williams were sentenced to being hanged, drawn and quartered. I won't go into the detail of this brutal punishment, whose origin was in the Middle Ages. It's hard to believe this was still on the statute book in Britain in 1840, and that it was not to be abolished as a sentence for high treason until 1870. There was a massive outcry over this decision, and the sentence on the three men was commuted to transportation to Australia.

Frost eventually returned to the UK in 1856, having been given an unconditional pardon, and died in Bristol, still actively advocating reform to the end, at the age of 93 in 1877. He is now the most famous and revered of Newport's sons, with a square in the city dedicated to his memory.

Answer: George Everest

Colonel Sir George Everest, born in Crickhowell in 1790, was the Surveyor General of India from 1830 to 1843. He was responsible for a large amount of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India that was carried out by the British Empire.

After he retired, his successor, Andrew Scott Waugh, identified a peak as possibly the highest in the world. Waugh proposed to the Royal Geographical Society that, rather than attempt to choose between the many alternative local names, it would be an appropriate honour to name the mountain after Everest.

Everest was adamant that this was wrong - it was always the practice to use local names. Additionally, his name could neither be written in Hindi nor easily pronounced by the local people. However Waugh's view prevailed.

Interestingly, Everest pronounced his name Eve-rest, but that has gone by the wayside.

Answer: Michael Sheen

With highlights including a 05:30 start on Aberavon Sands on Good Friday 2011, a last supper of beer and sandwiches while The Manic Street Preachers performed, and a crucifixion scene on a roundabout, this extraordinary and moving event involved and inspired the whole town.

Sheen was born in Newport and moved to Port Talbot at the age of eight.
Anthony Hopkins was born in Port Talbot, and Rob Brydon in nearby Baglan. There must be something in the air - from the sea or the steelworks, perhaps?

Answer: His sister, Gwen

Augustus John, born in Tenby in 1878, was a prominent portraitist who produced vivid depictions of the likes of T.E. Lawrence, Dylan Thomas and W. B. Yeats. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1942.

His elder sister, Gwen, born in 1876 in Haverfordwest, was also an artist. Her work was more low key, usually with unknown female subjects. She had nothing like her brother's success and fame. She was a model and lover of Rodin, who called her 'God's little Artist'. Augustus recognised her talent, saying: 'In 50 years' time I will be known as the brother of Gwen John.' He was probably harsh on himself, but critical opinion has certainly moved in that direction.

Augustus John's other relatives that were mentioned were as follows.

His daughter, from his second marriage, Vivien, was also an artist. She emerged from the shadow of her father and aunt to make a fine career.

His first wife, Ida Nettleship, was another artist, who died of puerpal fever in 1907.

Augustus and Ida's son, Sir Caspar John, had a different career - he was the British First Sea Lord in the 1960s.

Answer: World War I

Ellis Humphrey Evans, born in Trawsfynydd in 1887, was the eldest of eleven children to a farming family. He left school at 14 and became a shepherd.

He showed an aptitude for poetry soon afterwards and won several bardic chairs. He took the bardic name Hedd Wyn ('white peace' or 'blessed peace' in Welsh).

He joined up to fight for his country in the Great War, and in summer 1917 he was in France with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, when he completed an entry for the National Eisteddfod, and submitted it under the nom de plume 'Fleur de Lis'. On 31 July he was killed in the Battle of Passchendaele.

On 6 September, at the National Eisteddfod, the announcement was made that the winner was the poem submitted under the name 'Fleur de Lis', and trumpets were sounded for the author to make themselves known. When nobody was forthcoming and it was discovered that the poet had died six weeks earlier, the chair was draped in black cloth - 'The festival in tears and the poet in his grave.'

Answer: Welsh language TV station

It's hard to imagine what the TV landscape was like back then in the UK. There were three channels - two from the BBC and one from the private sector. These channels didn't run for 24 hours or anything near. And in Wales, the only Welsh language TV programmes were shown in short slots on the three channels. It was agreed across the political spectrum that to address the decline in the Welsh language a new TV service in the medium of Welsh was required.

Hence, in the 1979 UK General Election, the Conservatives made a firm commitment to provide a Welsh language television channel. When they got into office they reneged on the promise, feeling that this was a low risk item to cut. Gwynfor Evans quietly declared to a Plaid Cymru executive council meeting - under the heading of 'any other business'- that he would starve himself to death unless the Tories made good on their election pledge.

His long career had been marked by a reluctance to compromise his principles and he was one of the very few people in British politics who would not be suspected of making idle threats. Mrs Thatcher reversed the decision and the channel S4C - 'Channel Four Wales' started broadcasting in 1982.

Answer: Alfred Russel Wallace

Wallace was born in Usk in 1823. After an expedition to Brazil, when he had to abandon ship on the voyage home, he met Darwin, who was older and better connected. He then travelled to what was then called the East Indies - where he discovered thousands of new species. While there, he developed his thinking about the formation of species and formulated a theory of natural selection. He and Darwin exchanged letters, and he sent Darwin an essay entitled 'On The Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type', asking him to pass it to a publisher if he thought it was any good. Darwin recognised their common thinking and passed the essay along with an essay of his own from 1844 and a letter from 1857 for presentation to the Linnean Society.

The snappy title of the joint presentation was 'On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection'. The reception was pretty muted. The President of the Linnean Society said in his review of the year 1858 that not much of interest had been published. The next year, Darwin published 'On the Origin of Species'.

In 1908, the Darwin-Wallace Medal was instigated by the Linnean Society to mark the pivotal publication.

Answer: Donetsk

Hughes was an engineer and businessman in the iron and steel industry who developed several patented inventions. In 1869 he was given a commission by the Imperial Russian Government to develop a metal works in the Ukraine. He created coal and iron mines, and built up a self-sufficient industrial town. The works did very well under Hughes until his death in 1889, and then under his sons, becoming Russia's largest iron production centre.
Initially, the town was called Yuzovka in John Hughes's honour. It had a large community of expatriate British workers. They left after the Russian Revolution. In 1924 it was renamed Stalino after the then Soviet leader, before becoming Donetsk under Kruschchev in 1961.

Ukraine became independent in 1991. In 2014 Donetsk was the centre of fighting between pro-Russian and Ukraine combatants.