How many days and weeks until October 22nd?

On the night of October 22nd 1707, Old Style, the homeward-bound Mediterranean fleet ran onto the rocks off the Isles of Scilly. Four ships were lost, among them Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s flagship Association, and with them somewhere between 1,400 and 2,000 men. The navigators had believed themselves off Ushant. They were badly wrong about their longitude, which nobody at sea could then measure, and the disaster led to the Longitude Act of 1714 and in the end to Harrison’s clocks.

George Blake, serving forty-two years for passing British secrets to Moscow, went over the wall of Wormwood Scrubs on October 22nd 1966 by means of a rope ladder stiffened with knitting needles. He lay low in London for two months, then was smuggled out to Moscow. The Home Secretary was left to explain to the Commons how the man given the longest sentence then handed down had walked out of a prison in west London.

President Kennedy went on American television on the evening of October 22nd 1962 to announce that Soviet missiles had been found in Cuba. British viewers heard it the next morning. It was the moment the crisis became public.

Joan Fontaine, the Hollywood actress born in Tokyo to British parents in 1917, remains the only performer to win an Oscar for a Hitchcock film. Franz Liszt, the composer and piano virtuoso, shares the date, born in Hungary in 1811, and Derek Jacobi, the celebrated stage and screen actor, in Leytonstone, in 1938.

Born on October 22nd: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Franz Liszt and Joan Fontaine — 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 October 22nd birthday

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

October birthstone necklace

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

View on Amazon

Libra constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Libra for a October 22nd birthday.

View on Amazon

Personalised birth flower & birthstone disc

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

View on Amazon

Personalised star map print

The actual night sky over a chosen place on October 22nd, 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.