How many days and weeks until July 26th?

Britain had voted on July 5th 1945, but the count was held back three weeks while the service ballots came in from three continents. The results were declared on July 26th and Labour had won a majority of 146. Churchill went to Buckingham Palace that evening to resign, and Attlee arrived within minutes of his leaving to be appointed. Stalin, at Potsdam, had assumed the result would be arranged in advance.

On July 26th 1833 the bill to abolish slavery throughout the British colonies passed its third reading in the Commons. William Wilberforce, who had brought his first abolition motion forty-four years earlier and was by then very ill, was told the news and died three days later. The Act freed some 800,000 people. It compensated their owners, and not them.

Colonel Nasser announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company at Alexandria on July 26th 1956, using the name of the canal’s builder, de Lesseps, as the codeword for engineers to seize the offices. Britain and France held most of the shares, and the intervention that followed ended Anthony Eden’s premiership.

Mick Jagger, frontman of the Rolling Stones, was born in Dartford on July 26th 1943, and Helen Mirren, the actress later honoured with an Academy Award for playing Elizabeth II, in Hammersmith in 1945. George Bernard Shaw, the playwright behind Pygmalion, was born in 1856; Aldous Huxley, author of the novel Brave New World, in 1894; and Stanley Kubrick, the film director known for works such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, in 1928.

Born on July 26th: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Mick Jagger and Helen Mirren — 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 26th 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 26th 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 26th, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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