His first girlfriend (at age fifteen) was named Barbara Baker; his girlfriend at Art school (before dating Cynthia Powell, later Cynthia Lennon) was named Thelma Pickles.
His mother Julia was killed by a drunk driver when John was seventeen; his stepfather broke down at the news, and John had to go with the police to identify her body (he later named his first son [Julian Lennon] for her, and remembered his mother in the song "Julia", ten years after her death). His best friend and former band mate Stuart Sutcliffe died from a brain hemorrhage in 1962, when they were both 21; John asked Stuart's mother for the old scarf he'd worn to art school, and kept it as a memento.
His murder was first announced to the world by U.S. sportscaster Howard Cosell during "NFL Monday Night Football" (1970). According to Frank Gifford, Lennon met Ronald Reagan when both were guests on "Monday Night Football" in the mid-1970s. After appearing on the show, he gave Gifford and Cosell each a complete collection of The Beatles albums, which he autographed.
His neighbors at the Dakota included singer Roberta Flack, and actors Peter Boyle, Gloria Swanson, and Lauren Bacall.
His song "Imagine" was performed by Peter Gabriel at the opening ceremony to the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy.
His song "Jealous Guy" became a British number one single for Roxy Music in 1981. The band's lead singer Bryan Ferry later performed it at the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium in 1985.
His Steinway Model Z upright piano, the instrument he used to compose and record his signature song "Imagine", was bought by singer George Michael for £1.67m in the year 2000, who then donated it to Liverpool's Beatles Story museum.
His voice was sampled for the Marillion song "Gazpacho" (from their 1995 album "Afraid of Sunlight").
In 1969 he recorded the song "Give Peace A Chance" in room 1742, Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montréal, Canada. Norman Mailer, Tom Smothers, and Timothy Leary can be heard as part of the chorus.
In 1974, he and singer Harry Nilsson were ejected from the Troubadour Club in Hollywood by the bouncers, after they both heckled the Smothers Brothers (Tom Smothers and Dick Smothers) onstage. Lennon and Nilsson both sent flowers and an apology to the Smothers Brothers the next day, and Lennon replied to a columnist's speculation that he might have been using drugs, with the confirmation that they'd simply had too many Brandy Alexanders.
In 1989, the Republic of Abkhazia (in the former Soviet Georgia) proclaimed independence. To show the world they were rejecting their Communist past, they issued two postage stamps of Groucho Marx and Lennon (as opposed to Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin).
In 2001 the Liverpool Airport was renamed the John Lennon Airport after him. In 2005, a replica of a Yellow Submarine was unveiled outside this airport as a further commemorative gesture.
In 2002 Paul McCartney changed the credits to many of the songs he wrote with Lennon to "McCartney & Lennon" (from "Lennon & McCartney") to a large public uproar. However, this was not the first time McCartney's name appeared first; many of their early songs were so credited, and the same had been done with songs on the 1976 live album "Wings Over America". In the credits to Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984), McCartney's name appeared prominently - and alone - as composer of the songs performed, which included The Beatles tunes "Yesterday" and "Here, There and Everywhere".
In a 2007 interview on the BBC Radio program Desert Island Discs, his wife, Yoko Ono, revealed what his last words were. She said that he wanted to go home and see son Sean before he went to sleep rather than go out for dinner after leaving the recording studio. According to Ono: "I said 'Shall we go and have dinner before we go home?' and John said, 'No, let's go home because I want to see Sean before he goes to sleep.'" Moments later, he was gunned down in front of the historic Dakota building where the family lived in New York City.
In the days leading up to Lennon's murder, his killer Mark David Chapman lived the life' of J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" narrator Holden Caulfield, and in fact Chapman was calmly flipping through that book when he was arrested.
Inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Beatles January 20, 1988.
Inducted with Paul McCartney into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987.
Is portrayed by Tim Piper in The Linda McCartney Story (2000) (TV).
Isolated himself from the members of The Beatles after 1974. He had slammed Paul McCartney in the press (to which McCartney vehemently responded), he and George Harrison had stopped talking after an argument over The Concert For Bangladesh (Lennon wanted Yoko Ono to be an integral part of the show, and Harrison didn't want her to even perform). Lennon was also deeply hurt that Harrison largely left him out of his autobiography "I, Me, Mine". They never spoke again after the release of the book. He stayed away from Ringo Starr because he wanted to stay sober (and Starr was always drinking). He and McCartney were together for the last time on April 24th, 1976 (the night of the first "Saturday Night Live" (1975) offer of $3200 for the Beatles to reunite). Harrison maintained in later years that their disagreement was petty and that there was no real animosity between them.