How many days and weeks until February 11th?

On February 11th 1990 Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison near Paarl, hand in hand with his wife Winnie, after twenty-seven years in custody. No new photograph of him had been published since 1964, and much of the crowd waiting on the road had no clear idea what he looked like. He spoke that evening from the balcony of Cape Town City Hall and was elected president four years later.

Margaret Thatcher won the second ballot of the Conservative leadership election on February 11th 1975 and became the first woman to lead a major British party. Edward Heath, who had assumed no serious challenger existed, had been beaten in the first ballot a week earlier and resigned immediately. She entered Downing Street in May 1979.

At a grotto outside the Pyrenean town of Lourdes, on February 11th 1858, a fourteen-year-old miller’s daughter named Bernadette Soubirous reported the first of eighteen visions. The town now receives several million pilgrims a year, and the Catholic calendar keeps February 11th as the World Day of the Sick.

Thomas Edison, the inventor whose workshops produced everything from the phonograph to the electric light, was born on February 11th 1847, holder in the end of well over a thousand American patents.

Born on February 11th: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Thomas Edison and Jennifer Aniston — 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 February 11th birthday

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

Personalised birth flower & birthstone disc

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

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Aquarius constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Aquarius for a February 11th birthday.

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Personalised star map print

The actual night sky over a chosen place on February 11th, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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