The 236th day of the year, the 237th in a leap year
Born on 24 August
In UTC, since 1920, 24 August has been Virgo all day in 100 years. In the other 7, 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 42 more years a crossing on the day before or after fell on 24 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 7 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
- Wednesday and Monday16 times each between 1920 and 2026.
Seven crossings, then none
The sun entered Virgo on 24 August seven times between 1920 and 2026, all early in the day in UTC and each four years after the last: 04:52 UTC in 1923, 04:06 UTC in 1927, 03:10 UTC in 1931, 02:24 UTC in 1935, 01:31 UTC in 1939, 00:55 UTC in 1943 and 00:09 UTC in 1947, nine minutes into the day. After that the crossing did not reach this date again before 2026.
The steady retreat, about three-quarters of an hour every four years, is the leap day overcorrecting: each four-year cycle ends a little earlier than the one before, until in 1951 the latest crossing of the cycle fell back onto the 23rd.
So a 24 August birthday has been Virgo from its first minute in UTC in every year since 1948. A 1939 birthday on this date before 01:31 UTC was Leo; in Johannesburg, two hours ahead, the change came at 03:31.
Your year
Without JavaScript, the pages for each birth year give the generation and Chinese animal for a birth on 24 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 24 August that instant has fallen inside the day in 7 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 24 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 24 August — worked out from the time zones in use at that moment, as the IANA time zone database records them. A birth there on 24 August that year could be either sign, and the calculator above works it out for your own time zone.
- 1921: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 17:15 UTC
- 1922: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 23:04 UTC
- 1925: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 16:33 UTC
- 1926: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 22:14 UTC
- 1929: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 15:41 UTC
- 1930: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 21:27 UTC
- 1933: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 14:52 UTC
- 1934: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 20:32 UTC
- 1937: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 13:58 UTC
- 1938: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 19:46 UTC
- 1941: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 13:17 UTC
- 1942: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 18:58 UTC
- 1945: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 12:35 UTC
- 1946: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 18:26 UTC
- 1949: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 11:48 UTC
- 1950: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 17:23 UTC
- 1951: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 23:16 UTC
- 1954: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 16:36 UTC
- 1955: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 22:19 UTC
- 1958: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 15:46 UTC
- 1959: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 21:44 UTC
- 1962: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 15:13 UTC
- 1963: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 20:58 UTC
- 1966: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 14:18 UTC
- 1967: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 20:12 UTC
- 1970: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 13:34 UTC
- 1971: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 19:15 UTC
- 1974: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 12:29 UTC
- 1975: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 18:23 UTC
- 1978: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 11:57 UTC
- 1979: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 17:47 UTC
- 1982: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 11:15 UTC
- 1983: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 17:07 UTC
- 1987: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 16:10 UTC
- 1991: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 15:13 UTC
- 1995: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 14:35 UTC
- 1999: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 13:51 UTC
- 2003: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 13:08 UTC
- 2007: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 12:08 UTC
- 2011: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 11:21 UTC
- 2015: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 10:37 UTC
- 2019: the sun entered Virgo on 23 August, 10:02 UTC
Which weekday 24 August falls on
Across the 107 years from 1920 to 2026, 24 August falls on every day of the week: Wednesday 16, Monday 16, Tuesday 15, Thursday 15, Friday 15, Sunday 15, Saturday 15.
Showing 24 August in the 36 most recent years. Every weekday →
How common a birthday 24 August is
In England and Wales, from 1995 to 2014, an average of 1,818 babies were born on 24 August in each year of the twenty, making it the 157th 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 24 August
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Jorge Luis Borges | 1899–1986 | Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator |
| Paulo Coelho | 1947– | Brazilian lyricist and novelist |
| Sauli Niinistö | 1948– | Finnish politician and the 12th President of Finland (2012-2024) |
| Rupert Grint | 1988– | English actor |
| Fernand Braudel | 1902–1985 | French historian and leader of the Annales School |
| Jean-Michel Jarre | 1948– | French composer, performer and record producer |
| Marlee Matlin | 1965– | American actress |
| Alan Walker | 1997– | Norwegian electronic dance music producer |
| Stephen Fry | 1957– | British comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist |
| John Green | 1977– | American author and vlogger |
| Maya Yoshida | 1988– | Japanese association football player |
| William I of the Netherlands | 1772–1843 | King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg 1815-1840 |
| Ferdinand I of Romania | 1865–1927 | King of Romania from 1914 to 1927 |
| William Wilberforce | 1759–1833 | English politician and abolitionist |
| Albert Claude | 1899–1983 | Belgian-American cell biologist |
| A. S. Byatt | 1936–2023 | British writer |
| Orson Scott Card | 1951– | American science fiction novelist |
| Karen Uhlenbeck | 1942– | American mathematician |
Died on 24 August
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Simone Weil | 1909–1943 | French philosopher, writer, and social activist |
| Getúlio Vargas | 1882–1954 | President of Brazil (1930–1945; 1951–1954) |
| Rudolf Clausius | 1822–1888 | German mathematical physicist and professor |
| Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot | 1796–1832 | French physicist |
| Richard Attenborough | 1923–2014 | British actor |
| Walter Scheel | 1919–2016 | President of West Germany (1974-1979) |
| Rose of Lima | 1586–1617 | Dominican saint from Peru |
| Charlie Watts | 1941–2021 | British drummer |
| Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor | 1275–1313 | King of the Romans from 1308 to 1313 |
| Kenji Mizoguchi | 1898–1956 | Japanese film director and screenwriter |
| Sergei Dovlatov | 1941–1990 | Soviet writer |
| Elisabeth Kübler-Ross | 1926–2004 | Swiss-American psychiatrist and pioneer in near-death studies |
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.