How many days and weeks until April 6th?

The British tax year begins on April 6th for reasons entirely to do with bookkeeping. When Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, eleven days were removed and September 2nd was followed by September 14th. The Treasury had no intention of losing eleven days of revenue, so the year that had always begun on Lady Day, March 25th, came to begin on April 5th instead. A further day was added in 1800, a leap year under the old calendar but not the new. The arrangement has never been tidied up.

The first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens on April 6th 1896, in the marble Panathenaic Stadium before some 60,000 people. Fourteen nations sent 241 competitors, all of them men. The marathon was invented for the occasion, there being no such race in antiquity. Britain’s first champion was Launceston Elliot, a weightlifter born in India, who won the one-handed lift.

Richard I died on April 6th 1199 of a crossbow wound taken while inspecting a siege at Chalus, in the Limousin, without his mail. The chroniclers say he pardoned the boy who shot him, and that after his death the pardon was not honoured.

Raphael died on April 6th 1520 at thirty-seven; tradition gives him the same date for his birth in 1483, though the early sources disagree. The country singer-songwriter Merle Haggard was born on April 6th 1937, and the actor Paul Rudd, familiar from comedies and superhero films, in 1969.

Born on April 6th: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Andre Previn and Merle Haggard — 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 6th 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 6th birthday.

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Personalised star map print

The actual night sky over a chosen place on April 6th, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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