How many days and weeks until April 12th?

Yuri Gagarin left the ground at Baikonur at 09:07 Moscow time on April 12th 1961, 06:07 GMT, and became the first human being in space. Asked how he felt as the engines lit, he said ‘Poyekhali’ — let’s go. The flight lasted 108 minutes and one orbit. He did not land in his capsule: at about seven kilometres he was ejected and came down by parachute near Engels, in the Saratov region, where he had to persuade a farm worker and her granddaughter that he was Soviet and had come from space. The separate landing was concealed for years, because the record rules of the day required a pilot to come down with his aircraft.

Twenty years to the day later, on April 12th 1981, Columbia lifted off on STS-1 with John Young and Robert Crippen aboard, the first flight of the Space Shuttle and still the only maiden flight of an American spacecraft to carry a crew. They landed at Edwards two days afterwards.

Franklin Roosevelt died at Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12th 1945, eleven weeks into his fourth term and less than a month before the German surrender. Harry Truman said afterwards that he felt as though the moon and the stars had fallen on him.

Alan Ayckbourn’s plays open in Scarborough and reach London later, if at all. The playwright was born on April 12th 1939, and the jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock in 1940.

Born on April 12th: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Alan Ayckbourn and Herbie Hancock — both named above — share this star sign with everyone else born in the same window.

None of this is settled fact in the way the history above is — zodiac dates, birthstones and birth flowers are conventions rather than laws, and different sources hedge them slightly differently. The birthstone is the most standardised of the three (set by the trade in 1912 and revised since); the birth flower is the least, resting on Victorian tradition rather than any governing body.

Gift ideas for a April 12th birthday

A small, themed starting point rather than a shopping list — diamond for the stone, Aries for the sign, and the sky itself on the day.

Personalised birth flower & birthstone disc

Engraved with a name, the April birthstone and the daisy — both in one pendant, in a gift box.

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Aries constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Aries for a April 12th birthday.

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Personalised star map print

The actual night sky over a chosen place on April 12th, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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