History offers
a chance
to truly
understand
how the past
impacts the now.

Follow our
daily timelime
of historical
events to
discover the
role The Beatles
played in changing
the modern world.

1783--The US Congress ratifies the Peace Treaty between America and England.

1784--The Revolutionary War ends in Europe.

1898--Lewis Carroll, British author of "Alice in Wonderland," dies. Carroll also lectured in mathematics at Oxford and was a pioneer photographer. Carroll was one of John Lennon’s favorite authors, influencing him greatly during his childhood.

1914--Henry Ford introduces the assembly line for the production of his Model-T automobile.

1943--US President Franklin D. Roosevelt meets with Allied leaders during the opening day of the famous Casablanca Conference in Morocco. Roosevelt, General Charles DeGaulle (leader of free France), Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain, and General Henri Giraud (High Commissioner of French North and West Africa) hammer out the strategy that called for the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. On his way to the conference, Roosevelt becomes the first US President to fly in an airplane while in office.

1955--Deejay Alan Freed kicks off his first New York Rock ‘n’ Roll Ball. The package concert at Harlem's Saint Nicholas Arena is sold out over two nights and features Big Joe Turner (Shake, Rattle & Roll), The Moonglows (Sincerely), Fats Domino (Blueberry Hill) and The Drifters (Up on the Roof).

1961--The Beatles perform at Aintree Institute, Aintree, Liverpool.

1962--The Beatles perform at the Casbah Coffee Club, West Derby, Liverpool.

1963--The Beatles perform at Civic Hall, Ellesmere Port, Wirral, Cheshire, before a capacity crowd of 700, for a Wolverham Welfare Association Dance.

1964--The Beatles (minus Ringo Starr, who is fog-bound in Liverpool) depart for Paris for an 18-day engagement at the Olympia Theatre. Arriving in Paris, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison are met by 60 teenagers. Ringo, accompanied by Neil Aspinall, arrives the next day, just in time for a dress rehearsal performance.

1965--The Beatles put on two performances of "Another Beatles Christmas Show" at the Hammersmith Odeon in London.

1967--Twenty thousand hippies attend the Human Be-In in San Francisco, California.

1967--The New York Times reports that the US Army is conducting secret germ warfare experiments.

1967--Sonny & Cher release their hit single, The Beat Goes On.

1969--The Beatles, still without George Harrison, rehearse at Twickenham Film Studios for the ever-more-nebulous "Get Back" project. They perform songs more or less at random. Perhaps they suspect that if they quit playing, then it really will be the end for The Beatles. John Lennon did at least turn up for this rehearsal, but he complains that he took too many drugs the night before and hasn’t been to bed. Eventually, he leads the three-man Beatles through a medley of two new songs-in-progress, Madman and Watching Rainbows.

1973--Elvis Presley draws the largest audience for a single TV show (an estimated one billion viewers in 40 countries). "Elvis: Aloha From Hawaii," a live, worldwide concert from Honolulu International Center Arena (later known as the Neal S. Blaisdell Center Arena). The concert is performed at 12:30 a.m. Hawaiian Time, and is beamed live via Globecam Satellite to Australia, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, South Vietnam and other countries, and was seen on a delayed basis in approximately 30 European countries. The first American airing was April 4 on NBC-TV. The show was also released as a two-record album, and became one of Elvis’s top-selling LPs.

1978--The Wings single, Mull of Kintyre, becomes the biggest selling single ever in the UK, with sales (so far) of over 1,667,000 copies. By the end of January, the single will have sold over two million copies in the UK alone.

1980--Paul McCartney, staying in New York, tries to phone John Lennon to suggest a meeting, so they can share “some dynamite weed.” Yoko intercepts the call, however, and refuses to allow Paul to speak to John. Yoko freaks out when she hears that Paul is headed to Japan and she and John’s favorite suite at the Okura Hotel in Tokyo (where they had stayed on their last four trips to Japan).

1984--BBC Radio One broadcasts the program “Life Without Lennon,” which features Yoko Ono in conversation with writer Andy Peebles in Toyko, Japan.

1993--The complete uncensored version of the Warner Brothers 1988 film "Imagine: John Lennon" is transmitted on the satellite station TV1000.

For more day-by-day history go to HistoryUnlimited.net