March 25: On This Day in World History … briefly
The public proceedings were filmed and later turned into a documentary movie. The film 'Bed Peace' was made available for free on YouTube in August 2011 by Yoko Ono as part of her website 'Imagine Peace'.
1969: John and Yoko ‘Bed-In for Peace’
As the Vietnam War raged on in 1969, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono held two week-long Bed-Ins for Peace – one at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam and one at Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth in Montreal, each of which were intended to be non-violent protests against wars and experimental tests of new ways to promote peace. The idea is derived from a ‘sit-in’, in which a group of protesters remains seated in front of or within an establishment until they are evicted, arrested or their demands are met.
Knowing their March 20, 1969, marriage would be a huge press event, John and Yoko decided to use the publicity to promote world peace. They spent their honeymoon in the presidential suite (room 702) at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel for a week between March 25 and 31, inviting the world’s press into their hotel room every day between 9 am and 9 pm. After nonconformist artistic expressions such as their nude cover of the ‘Two Virgins’ album, the press were expecting them to be having sex, but instead the couple were just sitting in bed, wearing pajamas – in John’s words ‘like angels’ – talking about peace with signs over their bed reading ‘Hair Peace’ and ‘Bed Peace’. After seven days, they flew to Vienna, Austria, where they held a Bagism press conference.
During April 1969, John and Yoko sent acorns to the heads of state in various countries around the world in hopes that they would plant them as a symbol of peace. For eight months, the couple was not granted a single visit with any world leader. Their marriage (‘You can get married in Gibraltar near Spain’), the first Bed-In (‘Talking in our beds for a week’), the Vienna press conference (‘Made a lightning trip to Vienna … the newspapers said…’) and the acorns (‘Fifty acorns tied in a sack’) were all mentioned in the song ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’. Due to John and Yoko’s very public image, the Amsterdam Bed-In was greeted by fans and received a great deal of press coverage. Following the event, when asked if he thought the ‘Bed-In’ had been successful, John became rather frustrated. He insisted that the failure of the press to take the couple seriously was part of what he and Yoko wanted.
“It’s part of our policy not to be taken seriously. Our opposition, whoever they may be, in all manifest forms, don’t know how to handle humour. And we are humorous.”
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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