How many days and weeks until November 30th?

St Andrew’s Day is the feast of the patron saint of Scotland, and the saltire flag is said to come from a vision of a white diagonal cross in a blue sky before a battle against the Angles. It became an official bank holiday in Scotland under an Act of 2007, with the characteristic Scottish qualification that banks are not actually obliged to close. It also opens the Christmas season across much of northern Europe, Advent beginning on the Sunday nearest to it.

The first international football match was played on November 30th 1872 at Hamilton Crescent, the West of Scotland cricket ground in Partick, before four thousand spectators who paid a shilling each. Scotland, fielding eleven Queen’s Park players, drew nil-nil with England. The fixture has been played, on and off, for a century and a half.

The Crystal Palace burned down on the evening of November 30th 1936. Eighty-nine fire engines and more than four hundred firemen could do nothing with a building made largely of glass and dry timber; the glare was visible across several counties. Paxton’s structure had stood at Sydenham for eighty-two years after its move from Hyde Park, and the cause was never established.

Blenheim Palace was never intended as a maternity ward, but Winston Churchill, the statesman who led Britain through the Second World War, arrived there prematurely on November 30th 1874. Mark Twain, the writer best remembered for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, shares the date, in 1835, and Ridley Scott, the film director known for Alien and Blade Runner, in 1937.

Born on November 30th: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Winston Churchill and Mark Twain — 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 November 30th birthday

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

November birthstone necklace

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

View on Amazon

Sagittarius constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Sagittarius for a November 30th birthday.

View on Amazon

Personalised birth flower & birthstone disc

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

View on Amazon

Personalised star map print

The actual night sky over a chosen place on November 30th, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

View on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Availability and links were checked on 15 August 2026 and can change.