How many days and weeks until December 17th?

On December 17th 1903, on a cold and windy stretch of sand at Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina, Orville Wright flew 120 feet in twelve seconds. The brothers took turns and flew four times that morning, the last by Wilbur covering 852 feet in fifty-nine seconds. Then a gust caught the machine on the ground and turned it over, and it never flew again. Five people watched, one of whom took the photograph.

The telegram they sent home reported success, four flights, Thursday morning, and misspelled Orville’s name. The local paper declined to print the story. After a long quarrel with the Smithsonian over who had flown first, the Flyer itself was shipped to the Science Museum in London in 1928 and spent twenty years in the Science Museum’s keeping before returning to Washington.

The Simpsons was broadcast in America as a half-hour programme for the first time on December 17th 1989, and the episode was a Christmas one, in which Homer takes a job as a shopping-centre Father Christmas because the bonus has not arrived.

Britain’s first rock and roll star came out of a Soho coffee bar, where he was spotted playing after a spell at sea with the merchant navy. Tommy Steele, of Bermondsey, was born on December 17th 1936.

Born on December 17th: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Tommy Steele and Pope Francis — 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 December 17th birthday

A small, themed starting point rather than a shopping list — turquoise or lapis lazuli for the stone, Sagittarius for the sign, and the sky itself on the day.

December birthstone necklace

A simple pendant in the actual December birthstone colour, from a long-running UK jewellery brand.

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Sagittarius constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Sagittarius for a December 17th birthday.

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Personalised birth flower & birthstone disc

Engraved with a name, the December birthstone and the narcissus or holly — both in one pendant, in a gift box.

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Personalised star map print

The actual night sky over a chosen place on December 17th, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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