1940 in Wales
This article is about the particular significance of the year 1940 to Wales and its people.
Incumbents
Events
- The Urdd changes its policy to include 16 to 25-year-olds.
- 27 January - A freak ice storm brings down telephone and electricity lines in many parts of Wales.
- 3 March - The steamer Cato is damaged by a mine off Nash Point and 13 of the crew are killed.
- May
- 8 May - Three Nazi German Luftwaffe Heinkel 111s crash in separate incidents over Wales: one near Wrexham, one at Malpas in Denbighshire, and one at Bagillt, Flint. In all nine crew are killed and four captured.
- 3 July - Cardiff is bombed for the first time.
- 10 July - Ten people are killed in an air raid on Swansea Docks.
- 11 August - Seventeen people are killed in an air raid on Manselton, Swansea.
- 14 August - Three German Heinkel 111s are shot down during an air-raid on Cardiff, and another over North Wales after a raid on RAF Hawarden.
- 22 August - A steamer, the Thorold, is sunk by German aircraft off the Skerries. Ten crew are killed.
- 2 September - 33 people are killed in an air raid on Swansea.
- 3 September - Eleven people are killed in an air raid on Cardiff.
- 4 September - A German Junkers 88 crashes near Machynlleth. Four crew and a Gestapo officer are captured.
- 13 September - A German Heinkel 111 crashes into a house in Newport, Monmouthshire.
- 20 October - Communist minister and poet Thomas Evan Nicholas ("Niclas y Glais") and his son are arrested and interned for "endeavouring to impede recruitment to HM Forces".
- 22 November - The steamer Pikepool is damaged by a mine off Linney Head, Pembrokeshire, with the loss of 17 crew.
- Gwilym Owen Williams becomes chaplain of St David's College, Lampeter.
- Percy Cudlipp becomes editor of the Daily Herald.
- Alun Talfan Davies and his brother Aneirin found the publishing house Llyfrau'r Dryw.
Arts and literature
Awards
- National Eisteddfod of Wales (held in Bangor (radio))
- National Eisteddfod of Wales: Chair - withheld
- National Eisteddfod of Wales: Crown - T. Rowland Hughes
- National Eisteddfod of Wales: Prose Medal - withheld
New books
Music
Film
Broadcasting
- February 25 - The Proud Valley is the first film to have its première on radio, when the BBC broadcasts a 60-minute version.
- October - The BBC Radio Variety Department relocates to Bangor, Gwynedd because of wartime disruption.
Sport
- Football
- Quoits - Jack Price wins the Welsh championship for the third time.
Births
- 4 January - Professor Brian Josephson
- 17 January - Leighton Rees, darts champion
- 23 January - Ted Rowlands, politician
- 1 March - David Broome, show jumping champion
- 16 May - Sir Gareth Roberts, physicist (died 2007)
- 7 June - Tom Jones, singer
- 29 June - John Dawes, rugby player
- 3 September - Eduardo Hughes Galeano, Uruguayan writer of Welsh descent
- 12 September - Patrick Mower, Welsh-descended actor
- 14 October - Christopher Timothy, actor (in Bala, Gwynedd)
- 13 December - Klaus Armstrong-Braun, environmentalist
- 24 December - John Marek, politician
- date unknown
Deaths
- 12 February - William Edwards, educationist
- 21 February - Sir Alfred Edward Lewis, banker
- 20 March - William Thomas Edwards (Gwilym Deudraeth), poet
- 7 April - Ernest Rowland, priest and Wales international rugby player, 75
- 27 April - Fred Cornish, Wales international rugby player
- 8 August - Daniel Lleufer Thomas, lawyer and biographer
- 20 August - Henry Maldwyn Hughes, Wesleyan minister
- 26 September - W. H. Davies, poet and author
- 9 October - Sir Wilfred Grenfell, medical missionary to Newfoundland and Labrador
- 9 November - Gwilym Owen, physicist
- 15 December
- Robert Thomas Jones, quarrymen’s leader
- Sir David Richard Llewellyn, 1st Baronet, industrialist