How many days and weeks until September 2nd?

The Great Fire of London began in the small hours of Sunday September 2nd 1666 in Thomas Farriner’s bakehouse in Pudding Lane. The Lord Mayor, Thomas Bludworth, was roused, looked at it, dismissed it as nothing and went back to bed. Four days later some 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches and the old St Paul’s had gone, along with most of the walled City. Samuel Pepys took a boat downriver to watch it, then buried his wine and his Parmesan cheese in the garden.

An Anglo-Egyptian force under Herbert Kitchener broke the Mahdist army outside Omdurman on September 2nd 1898, in a morning and at a distance: massed rifles, artillery and gunboats against an army that could rarely close the ground. Something like ten thousand Sudanese were killed. Kitchener lost fewer than fifty men. One of the 21st Lancers who charged that day was a twenty-three-year-old Winston Churchill, filing copy for the Morning Post as he rode, who later made the campaign into two volumes notably cool about his own commander.

Japan’s surrender was signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2nd 1945, and the Second World War ended. The whole thing was over in twenty-three minutes.

Keanu Reeves, the actor known for the Matrix films, was born in Beirut on September 2nd 1964. Lennox Lewis, later heavyweight champion of the world, was born in West Ham a year later, and the actress Salma Hayek the year after that.

Born on September 2nd: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Keanu Reeves and Lennox Lewis — 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 September 2nd birthday

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

September birthstone necklace

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

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Virgo constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Virgo for a September 2nd birthday.

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Personalised birth flower & birthstone disc

Engraved with a name, the September birthstone and the aster — 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 September 2nd, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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