Twin brothers Hugh and George Palmer opened the zoo in 1960. It started off small but rapidly expanded. At one point the zoo housed tigers, elephants, lions, emus, camels, bears, pumas and many more.

Gueret Street, which was named after Mr Louis Gueret, a Director of the Barry Railway Company. The street earned a fairly sordid reputation, and finally lost its name when Hirwaun Street was extended after a fire destroyed a number of houses there in the early part of the century.

The Ship Hotel – the original was built for the Romilly family in 1860. It was also used as a coroner’s courtroom. This building was demolished and the Ship Hotel that we know now was built on the site in 1891.

The locomotive Olton Hall, was bought in 1981 by West Coast Railways and restored. When Warner Bros were looking for a steam train to be used as the Hogwarts Express in the movie Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, they chose the restored Olton Hall steam train. The same train was used in all eight of the Harry Potter films.

In 1841 the old village had twelve houses. Forty years later, there were twenty houses and still less than a hundred people living there. As the docks were developed and people moved to Barry, the demand for housing dramatically changed how Barry looked as other areas in Barry were developed.

The Captains Wife in Sully is reputed to house at least four ghosts together with the ghost of the tragic Captains wife from which the pub earned its name.

The very first Medical Officer appointed was Dr George Neale in July 1888. The first hospital in Barry was based in High Street. Dr George Neale was the surgeon. In 1989 this hospital closed and two rooms in Princes Street were used instead. Dr Neale kept his eye on the ships that entered the docks. He boarded any ship that had cases of sickness on and carried out inspections. There was a tugboat available at all times ready to tow a ship away from Barry, if Dr Neale requested this.

Billy Butlin had a nightmare holiday where he was locked out of his B&B all day, so decided to build Barry Island Butlins. This was an incredibly successful camp until its closure in 1986.

Two hundred and twenty million years ago, in the later part of the Triassic Period, South Wales and the Bendricks was a desert; however, life existed here! Footprints of animals preserved in the sandstone and siltstones were found by a four-year-old girl with her parents.

Bob Hope was born in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons. His father, William Henry Hope, was a stonemason from Weston-Super-Mare and his Welsh mother, Avis Townes came from Barry south Glamorgan. The family later mover to Ohio is the USA.