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John Winston Lennon, MBE (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980)

This was one of those events where they say you will always remember where you were, at what you were doing, when you heard the news. I was 14 years old, and I was tucked in bed (it was a school night) listening to my transistor radio. My parents were probably watching TV, because in the US it was "Monday Night Football" night. I think I remember them telling me the news and I changed the radio station so I could find an update.

This clip I found on YouTube seems to indicate that the majority of Americans learned of John Lennon's death while watching the football game. The announcer, the late Howard Cosell (along with co-announcer Frank Gifford) announced John's death during the game.

RIP, John Lennon.

I'll never forget it. I was lying in bed at home (still a student), listening to the 7:00 news on BBC radio.

The moment the newsreader said, in such a sombre and ominous tone, "Former Beatle, John Lennon...", I knew he was dead. What a shock. A female friend of mine burst into tears when she heard. Her husband told me that she had realised that there would never be a Beatles reunion and that it marked a life-changing rite of passage for all of us. And he was right.

Like many others, I have since stood in the very place where it happened, and across the road in Central Park's "Strawberry Fields" (I went to school a hundred yards or so from the original Strawberry Fields, which itself was a couple of hundred yards from where John was raised).

John will never be forgotten.

I was getting ready to go to work, listening to Noel Edmonds on Radio 1... My wife was in hospital and when she phoned from the ward (to make sure I was OK, bless her...) I almost forgot to ask how she was!

George