8 December

8 December 1980: John Lennon is shot dead in New York.

'What we're really doing is sending out a message to the world, mainly to the youth, especially the youth or anybody, really, that's interested in protesting for peace or protesting against any forms of violence. And the things are, the Grosvenor Square marches in London, the end product of it was newspaper stories about riots and fighting. And we did the bed event in Amsterdam and the bag piece in Vienna just to give people an idea that there's many ways of protest, and this is one of them. And anybody could grow their hair for peace or give up a week of their holiday for peace or sit in a bag for peace. Protest against peace, anyway, but peacefully, because we think that peace is only got by peaceful methods, and to fight the establishment with their own weapons is no good, because they always win, and they have been winning for thousands of years. They know how to play the game violence, and it's easier for them when they can recognise you and shoot you.'

John Lennon explaining why he and Yoko Ono spent a week of their honeymoon in bed as an anti-war protest.