How many days and weeks until October 29th?

Sir Walter Raleigh was executed at Old Palace Yard, Westminster, on October 29th 1618, under a sentence passed fifteen years earlier and revived for political convenience after a disastrous expedition to the Orinoco. He was about sixty-four; nobody has ever established the year he was born. Thirteen of his last years had been spent in the Tower writing a History of the World, which he had brought only as far as 130 BC.

On October 29th 1969 a student at UCLA typed the first message ever sent between two computers on the ARPANET, addressed to a machine at the Stanford Research Institute. He managed the letters L and O before the system crashed. The intended word was LOGIN, so the first transmission on the ancestor of the internet was, by accident, ‘lo’.

The New York market broke again on October 29th 1929, Black Tuesday, with sixteen million shares changing hands and no buyers for a great many of them. The index did not regain its 1929 level until 1954.

James Boswell, the biographer, was born in Edinburgh on October 29th 1740. He met Samuel Johnson in a bookshop off Covent Garden at twenty-two, was insulted within a minute of opening his mouth, and spent much of the rest of his life taking notes.

Born on October 29th: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

James Boswell and Richard Dreyfuss — 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 29th birthday

A small, themed starting point rather than a shopping list — opal for the stone, Scorpio 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.

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Scorpio constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Scorpio for a October 29th birthday.

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Personalised birth flower & birthstone disc

Engraved with a name, the October birthstone and the marigold — 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 October 29th, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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