The 229th day of the year, the 230th in a leap year
Born on 17 August
Every 17 August birthday from 1920 to 2026 was Leo, in every time zone.
- Star sign
- LeoFire, fixed, ruled by the Sun.
- Birthstone
- Peridot, Spinel, SardonyxThe 1912 list gave Sardonyx and Peridot.
- Birth flower
- Gladiolus, PoppyUsually taken today to mean strength of character and remembrance.
- Most common weekdays
- Wednesday and Monday16 times each between 1920 and 2026.
Your year
Without JavaScript, the pages for each birth year give the generation and Chinese animal for a birth on 17 August in any year.
Which weekday 17 August falls on
Across the 107 years from 1920 to 2026, 17 August falls on every day of the week: Wednesday 16, Monday 16, Tuesday 15, Thursday 15, Friday 15, Sunday 15, Saturday 15.
Showing 17 August in the 36 most recent years. Every weekday →
How common a birthday 17 August is
In England and Wales, from 1995 to 2014, an average of 1,815 babies were born on 17 August in each year of the twenty, making it the 167th most common of the 366 dates, where 26 September came first with 1,974 and 26 December last with 1,359.
Office for National Statistics, How popular is your birthday? Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. What a ranking like this can and cannot say →
Born on 17 August
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Robert De Niro | 1943– | American actor |
| Herta Müller | 1953– | German-Romanian novelist, poet and essayist |
| Mae West | 1893–1980 | American actress, singer, screenwriter, and writer |
| V. S. Naipaul | 1932–2018 | Trinidadian-British writer |
| Thierry Henry | 1977– | French association football player and manager |
| Jiang Zemin | 1926–2022 | General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party from 1989 to 2002 |
| Sean Penn | 1960– | American actor |
| John III Sobieski | 1629–1696 | King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania |
| Mikhail Botvinnik | 1911–1995 | Soviet chess player |
| Larry Ellison | 1944– | American internet entrepreneur and businessman |
| Charles I of Austria | 1887–1922 | Last monarch of Austria-Hungary (r. 1916–1918) |
| Marcus Garvey | 1887–1940 | Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur |
| Nelson Piquet | 1952– | Brazilian racing driver |
| Maureen O'Hara | 1920–2015 | Irish–American actress and singer |
| William Gallas | 1977– | French footballer |
| Tarja Turunen | 1977– | Finnish singer |
| Ted Hughes | 1930–1998 | English poet and children's writer |
| Austin Butler | 1991– | American actor |
Died on 17 August
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Frederick the Great | 1712–1786 | King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786 |
| José de San Martín | 1778–1850 | Argentine general and independence leader |
| Otto Stern | 1888–1969 | German-American physicist |
| Rudolf Hess | 1894–1987 | German Nazi leader and Reich Minister without Portfolio |
| Francesco Cossiga | 1928–2010 | 8th President of Italy |
| Zia-ul-Haq | 1924–1988 | President of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988 |
| Radoje Domanović | 1873–1908 | Serbian writer |
| Charlotte Perkins Gilman | 1860–1935 | American feminist, writer, artist, and lecturer |
| Lorenzo Da Ponte | 1749–1838 | Italian opera librettist, poet and Roman Catholic priest |
| Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen | 1622–1676 | German writer |
| Terence Stamp | 1938–2025 | British actor |
| Matthew Boulton | 1728–1809 | English manufacturer, industrialist, business partner of James Watt |
Names are the titles of the English Wikipedia articles; years and the short descriptions are from Wikidata, which publishes under CC0, checked and corrected by hand where they needed it, and nothing is said about anybody beyond that. Ask for a removal.