How many days and weeks until April 21st?

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born by caesarean section at twenty to three on the morning of April 21st 1926, at 17 Bruton Street in Mayfair, the London house of her mother’s father. She was third in line and nobody expected her to reign. The house was demolished by developers before the war, not bombed as is usually said; a plaque on the office block marks the spot. She kept the real birthday privately and the official one in June, on the sound British principle that a parade is better held in decent weather.

On her twenty-first birthday, April 21st 1947, she broadcast to the Commonwealth from Cape Town: ‘I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.’ She was twenty when the words were written for her, and she kept to them for seventy-five years.

Henry VII died at Richmond on April 21st 1509 and his seventeen-year-old son became Henry VIII; the death was kept quiet for two days while the succession was arranged. On April 21st 1918 Manfred von Richthofen was shot down near Vaux-sur-Somme after eighty victories. The RAF credited a Canadian pilot; the evidence points to Australian gunners on the ground, and the argument has never been settled.

Currer Bell, on the title page of Jane Eyre, was the novelist Charlotte Bronte, born April 21st 1816. The rock musician Iggy Pop, later dubbed the godfather of punk, followed in 1947.

Born on April 21st: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Queen Elizabeth II and Charlotte Bronte — 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 21st birthday

A small, themed starting point rather than a shopping list — diamond for the stone, Taurus 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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Taurus constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Taurus for a April 21st birthday.

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Personalised star map print

The actual night sky over a chosen place on April 21st, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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