How many days and weeks until May 31st?

On May 31st 1859 the Great Clock at Westminster began keeping time. The bell that gives the tower its nickname did not ring out until July 11th, and cracked that September. It was given an eighth of a turn so the hammer struck a different spot, given a lighter hammer, and a small square cut from the crack to stop it spreading. Big Ben has sounded very slightly flawed from that autumn on, and nobody has proposed correcting it.

Samuel Pepys made the final entry in his diary on May 31st 1669. He believed he was going blind, and that writing in shorthand by candlelight was the cause. He was thirty-six, lived another thirty-four years, spent most of them reorganising the Royal Navy, and never resumed it. It runs to over a million words and was not published in full until the 1970s.

Something like a hundred thousand people turned out in Belfast on May 31st 1911 to watch the hull of the Titanic go down the slipway at Harland and Wolff. It took sixty-two seconds, and twenty-two tons of tallow and soap to grease the ways. The Treaty of Vereeniging was signed in Pretoria on May 31st 1902, ending the Second Boer War after nearly three years.

Redditch, in Worcestershire, produced Led Zeppelin’s drummer John Bonham on May 31st 1948. Clint Eastwood, the actor and director known for Westerns and cop thrillers, was born in 1930, and Walt Whitman, the poet who wrote Leaves of Grass, in 1819.

Born on May 31st: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Clint Eastwood and John Bonham — 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 May 31st birthday

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

May birthstone necklace

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

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Gemini constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Gemini for a May 31st birthday.

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Personalised birth flower & birthstone disc

Engraved with a name, the May birthstone and the lily of the valley — 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 May 31st, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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