John Lennon

It's the birthday of John Lennon, born on this day in Liverpool (1940). His parents separated when he was one. His mother came in and out of his life, and he was raised by his aunt and uncle. But his mom taught him to play the banjo and they listened to rock 'n' roll records together.

Sixteen-year-old John started a band called the Quarrymen, and when they were playing at a church fundraiser, Paul McCartney heard them and came up to introduce himself. Soon, McCartney was part of the band, and the two teenagers started writing songs together. When John's mother died in a car crash a year later, he and Paul McCartney became even closer, because Paul's mother had died from cancer less than two years earlier.

In 1960, the group became the Silver Beatles, and soon, just the Beatles, but it wasn't until 1962 that they ended up with the four band members who would become the band as we know them: Lennon, McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.

The Beatles became a sensation; "Beatlemania" swept across Europe and the United States.
When his son Sean was born in 1975, Lennon retired from public life and spent five years staying home with his family. In November of 1980, he and his wife, Yoko, released an album called Double Fantasy, gave interviews, and considered touring again. But on December 8th, he was shot outside his apartment by a 25-year-old man named Mark David Chapman. Chapman was obsessed with J.D. Salinger's novel Catcher in the Rye, and claimed that he thought of himself as Holden Caulfield, and that this would explain his actions — although he later admitted that Holden Caulfield would probably not have shot someone.

A few days after her husband's murder, Yoko Ono asked for 10 minutes of silence to honor him, and people all over the world observed the silence, including a crowd of more than 100,000 people in Central Park. The area of Central Park between 71st and 74th streets was designated "Strawberry Fields," a green space and peace garden in memory of John Lennon.