John Lennon’s “Imagine” is released
October 11, 1971 sees the release of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” one of the most influential songs of the 20 century.
Lennon began writing the song while still a member of the Beatles, at a time when the band had achieved unprecedented popularity but struggled to cope with their new reality. The song’s idealistic, utopian lyrics were heavily influenced by Lennon’s wife, conceptual artist Yoko Ono. He would later assert that the “lyric and concept” were “straight out of Grapefruit,” a book of poetry by Ono, and she officially received a joint writing credit in 2017.
Eight hundred children are gassed to death at Auschwitz On October 10, 1944, 800 Romani children, including more than a hundred boys between 9 and 14 years old, are systematically murdered. Auschwitz was really a group of camps, designated I, II and III. There were also 40 smaller “satellite” camps. It was at Auschwitz II, at Birkenau, established in October 1941, that the SS created a complex, monstrously orchestrated killing […]
