How many days and weeks until July 24th?

Mary, Queen of Scots was forced to abdicate on July 24th 1567 while held on an island in Loch Leven, in favour of her thirteen-month-old son, who became James VI. She was twenty-four and had been queen since she was six days old. She escaped the following May, lost the battle of Langside and fled into England, where Elizabeth kept her in one house or another for nineteen years.

Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific on July 24th 1969, eight days and three hours after launch. The crew were handed biological isolation garments before leaving the capsule and put straight into a converted caravan, in case they had brought something back from the Moon; President Nixon greeted them through its window. They were not released until August 10th.

Hiram Bingham was led up to Machu Picchu on July 24th 1911 by a local farmer and an eleven-year-old boy. The site was not lost in any real sense, since two families were farming its terraces at the time, but Bingham had photographs, a Yale expedition behind him and National Geographic in front of him. He also removed a great many artefacts, which Yale did not return until a century later.

Amelia Earhart, the aviator who became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, was born on July 24th 1897, and would have turned forty three weeks after the take-off from Lae. Alexandre Dumas, the novelist behind The Three Musketeers, was born in 1802; Jennifer Lopez, the singer and actress, in 1969; and Anna Paquin, the actress who won an Academy Award for The Piano, in 1982.

Born on July 24th: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Amelia Earhart and Alexandre Dumas — 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 July 24th birthday

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

July birthstone necklace

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

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Leo constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Leo for a July 24th birthday.

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Personalised birth flower & birthstone disc

Engraved with a name, the July birthstone and the larkspur — 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 July 24th, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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