The 235th day of the year, the 236th in a leap year
Born on 23 August
In UTC, since 1920, 23 August has been Leo all day in 7 years and Virgo all day in 17 years. In the other 83, the sun moved from Leo into Virgo during the day, so a birthday then is Leo or Virgo depending on the hour; the table below gives the moment. Those are UTC days: in 24 more years a crossing on the day before or after fell on 23 August by the clocks somewhere east or west of Greenwich, listed below the table.
- Star sign
- Leo or VirgoThe sun changed sign on this date in 83 of 107 years.
- 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
- Tuesday and Sunday16 times each between 1920 and 2026.
The usual first day of Virgo
Virgo usually begins on 23 August: between 1920 and 2026 the sun entered it on this date, in UTC, in 83 years, at times from 00:18 UTC in 1976 to 23:16 UTC in 1951.
The exceptions sit at either end. In seven years, from 1923 to 1947, the crossing slipped past midnight into the 24th and 23 August was Leo all day; since 1980 it has come on the 22nd in 17 years, and in those 23 August was Virgo all day. The most recent were 2024 and 2025. In 2026 the crossing was back on the 23rd, at 02:19 UTC.
At that hour much of the world was already well into the day. 02:19 UTC in 2026 was 04:19 in Johannesburg and 12:19 in Sydney, and it was still 22 August in New York, at 22:19, so a New York birth late on 22 August 2026 is Virgo. In 2025 the crossing came on the 22nd at 20:34 UTC, which was already 23 August in Sydney, at 06:34.
Your year
Without JavaScript, the pages for each birth year give the generation and Chinese animal for a birth on 23 August in any year.
Which sign, by year
The sun moves from Leo into Virgo at an instant that falls about six hours later each year and jumps back most of a day at each leap year. On 23 August that instant has fallen inside the day in 83 years since 1920; those years show the moment, in UTC and to the minute. A birth before it is Leo, after it Virgo. To read one of these times on your own clock on 23 August, add your time zone's offset east of Greenwich or subtract it to the west, or put the year into the calculator above, which works in your own time zone.
Every year from 1920 to 2026. Where a cell shows a time, the sun entered Virgo at that moment, UTC. Why the day moves →
Other time zones
A date begins earlier east of Greenwich and later to the west, so in these years the sun changed sign on the day before or after in UTC, at a moment when clocks somewhere on earth already, or still, showed 23 August — worked out from the time zones in use at that moment, as the IANA time zone database records them. A birth there on 23 August that year could be either sign, and the calculator above works it out for your own time zone.
- 1923: the sun entered Virgo on 24 August, 04:52 UTC
- 1927: the sun entered Virgo on 24 August, 04:06 UTC
- 1931: the sun entered Virgo on 24 August, 03:10 UTC
- 1935: the sun entered Virgo on 24 August, 02:24 UTC
- 1939: the sun entered Virgo on 24 August, 01:31 UTC
- 1943: the sun entered Virgo on 24 August, 00:55 UTC
- 1947: the sun entered Virgo on 24 August, 00:09 UTC
- 1980: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 23:40 UTC
- 1984: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 23:00 UTC
- 1988: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 21:54 UTC
- 1992: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 21:10 UTC
- 1996: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 20:23 UTC
- 2000: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 19:49 UTC
- 2004: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 18:53 UTC
- 2008: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 18:02 UTC
- 2009: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 23:39 UTC
- 2012: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 17:07 UTC
- 2013: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 23:01 UTC
- 2016: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 16:39 UTC
- 2017: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 22:20 UTC
- 2020: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 15:45 UTC
- 2021: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 21:35 UTC
- 2024: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 14:55 UTC
- 2025: the sun entered Virgo on 22 August, 20:34 UTC
Which weekday 23 August falls on
Across the 107 years from 1920 to 2026, 23 August falls on every day of the week: Tuesday 16, Sunday 16, Monday 15, Wednesday 15, Thursday 15, Saturday 15, Friday 15.
Showing 23 August in the 36 most recent years. Every weekday →
How common a birthday 23 August is
In England and Wales, from 1995 to 2014, an average of 1,832 babies were born on 23 August in each year of the twenty, making it the 121st 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 23 August
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Louis XVI | 1754–1793 | King of France and Navarre from 1774 to 1791, then King of the French from 1791 to 1792 |
| Kobe Bryant | 1978–2020 | American basketball player |
| Edgar de Wahl | 1867–1948 | Estonian teacher and linguist |
| Georges Cuvier | 1769–1832 | French naturalist, zoologist and paleontologist |
| Gene Kelly | 1912–1996 | American dancer, actor, singer, director and choreographer |
| Halimah Yacob | 1954– | President of Singapore from 2017 to 2023 |
| Kenneth Arrow | 1921–2017 | American economist |
| Konstantin Novoselov | 1974– | Russian-British physicist known for graphene work |
| Giuseppe Meazza | 1910–1979 | Italian association football player and manager |
| Eleftherios Venizelos | 1864–1936 | Greek statesman, Prime Minister of Greece between 1910 and 1933 |
| Robert Solow | 1924–2023 | American economist |
| Houari Boumédiène | 1932–1978 | Head of State of Algeria from 1965 to 1978 |
| River Phoenix | 1970–1993 | American actor and musician |
| Robert Curl | 1933–2022 | American chemist |
| Akhmad Kadyrov | 1951–2004 | Chechen politician and Islamic religious leader |
| Thomas A. Steitz | 1940–2018 | American biochemist |
| Jared Fogle | 1977– | American spokesperson |
| Glen Johnson | 1984– | English association football player |
Died on 23 August
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Abu Bakr | 573–634 | 1st Rashidun Caliph and father-in-law of Muhammad |
| Charles-Augustin de Coulomb | 1736–1806 | French physicist |
| William Wallace | 1270–1305 | Scottish knight and leading figure in the First War of Scottish Independence |
| Yevgeny Prigozhin | 1961–2023 | Russian mercenary leader who led the Wagner Group |
| Rudolph Valentino | 1895–1926 | Italian actor |
| John Kendrew | 1917–1997 | English biochemist and crystallographer |
| Adolf Loos | 1870–1933 | Austrian and Czech architect and art collector |
| Deodoro da Fonseca | 1827–1892 | President of Brazil |
| Abdülmecid II | 1868–1944 | last caliph of the Ottoman Dynasty |
| R. D. Laing | 1927–1989 | Scottish psychiatrist |
| Stanford Moore | 1913–1982 | American biochemist |
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.