December 26th

1948: The Gwyn Nicholls Memorial Gates at the Arms Park were dedicated by former team-mate Rhys Gale. Known as ‘The Prince of Three-Quarters’, Nicholls was born in 1874 and first played rugby for Cardiff in 1893. In 1909 he refereed the match between England and Scotland at the Richmond Athletic Ground. This was the last international to be played there. In 1923, while on holiday at Weston-super-Mare, he was involved in the rescue of two young girls from the sea. Not a strong swimmer, he only just got back to shore. His health never fully recovered and he died in March 1939. (T.D. Breverton, The Welsh Almanac, Glyndwr Publications, 2002)

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2004: Newlyweds Jennifer Hill and her husband Tony, a museum assistant at St Fagans, escaped unhurt from the Boxing Day tsunami which hit while they were on honeymoon at Marawila, Sri Lanka. The water stopped only yards from their beach bungalow. On January 5th 2005, the First Minister at the National Assembly led three minutes silence in Cardiff in memory of the 150,000 killed in the disaster. (South Wales Echo)