Short answers, pulled from the story.
Swansea earned the nickname Copperopolis because from the early 1700s to the late 1800s it was the world's leading copper-smelting area. By the 1850s the city had more than 600 furnaces and a fleet of 500 oceangoing ships carrying ore from every inhabited continent. The first copper smelter was established there in 1717.
The name Swansea is believed to be Old Norse in origin, combining the Viking personal name Svein or Sweyn with the suffix -ey, meaning island or inlet. It first appears as Sweynesse in the town's first Royal charter issued between 1158 and 1184. Some accounts identify the eponym as Sweyn Forkbeard, who lived roughly between 960 and 1014.
The oldest ceremonial burial in Western Europe was discovered at Paviland on the Gower Peninsula in 1823 and dated to 22,000 BC. The same peninsula also contains Long Hole Cave, where finds have been interpreted as traces of the first modern humans in Britain.
Swansea was granted city status in 1969 to mark Prince Charles's investiture as the Prince of Wales. The Prince announced the designation on the 3rd of July 1969 during a tour of Wales. Swansea obtained the further right to have a Lord Mayor in 1982.
The Swansea Blitz, also called the Three Nights Blitz, was a German bombing campaign on the 19th, 20th, and the 21st of February 1941 that destroyed much of the town centre. Swansea was targeted because of its industrial importance during the Second World War.
Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea and lived at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive in the Uplands area for 23 years. He produced two-thirds of his published work in the bedroom of that house. Thomas described Swansea as an "ugly lovely town" and was a member of a local circle of artists and writers called the Kardomah Gang.