October 9, 1940 – As sirens wailed during a German Luftwaffe attack, John Lennon is born at Oxford Street Maternity Hospital in Liverpool, England to Julia Stanley and Alfred Lennon.

1956 – John’s mother buys him a guitar. He forms his first group, the Quarrymen, with pals Pete Shotton, Nigel Whalley, and Ivan Vaughan.

July 6, 1957 – John meets Paul McCartney at the Woolton Parish Church in Liverpool during a performance by the Quarrymen.

1958 – John writes his first song, “Hello Little Girl,” which is later recorded by the Beatles at their 1962 audition for Decca Records.

July 15, 1958 – John’s mother is killed while crossing the road by an off-duty policeman.

1960 – In his final year of art school in Liverpool, John forms a group with Paul, George, and Stu Sutcliffe.

August 1960 – Pete Best joins The Silver Beetles as drummer for their six week residency at a strip bar in Hamburg. Stu eventually leaves the group, and Paul takes over on bass.

January 1961 – The Beatles debut at the Cavern Club, Liverpool.

January 24, 1962 – The Beatles agree verbally to be managed by Brian Epstein

June 4, 1962 – George Martin signs The Beatles to Parlophone EMI.

August 23, 1962 – John marries Cynthia Powell as news hits the press that Brian Epstein has fired Pete Best.

February 1963 – The Beatles begin their first U.K. tour. They take one night off to record the album Please Please Me in one session.

April 8, 1963 – John Charles Julian Lennon is born to Cynthia and John at Sefton General Hospital, in Liverpool.

August 3, 1963 – After almost three hundred performances at the venue, The Beatles play their farewell show at the Cavern Club.

February 7, 1964 – The Beatles embark on their first US tour.

February 9 and 16, 1964 – The Beatles headline twice on the “Ed Sullivan Show.”

March 1964 – With “Can’t Buy Me Love” topping the charts both in Britain and America, shooting begins on the Beatles’ first feature film, A Hard Day’s Night.

April 1964 – John’s first book of stories and poems, In His Own Write, is published.

August 1964 – After touring Austrailia, The Beatles visit the U.S. for a 32-day tour. Bob Dylan introduces them to marijuana.

January 1965 – John composes “Help!”

Spring 1965 – A friend of George Harrison’s secretly spikes coffee with LSD, sending John, his wife Cynthia, George, and Patti Boyd on their first LSD trip.

June 1965 – John’s second book, A Spaniard In The Works, is published.

July 29, 1965 – Help! premieres in London’s West End.

August 1965 – The Beatles visit Elvis Presley at his home. Elvis refers to each of them as “Beatle,” not knowing their individual names.

December 3, 1965 – Rubber Soul is released.

June 20, 1966 – The American album Yesterday and Today is released with the infamous “butcher cover.” It was later recalled after complaints.

August 5, 1966 – Revolver is released.

August 29, 1966 – After major difficulties on the road, including death threats, The Beatles perform their final concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. They are now solely a studio group.

November 1966 – Yoko Ono and John Lennon meet at Indica Gallery in London.

February 1967 – John and Paul receive the Song of the Year Grammy� Award for “Michelle.”

June 1, 1967 – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is released.

September 1967 – John writes “I Am the Walrus.”

November 27, 1967 – Magical Mystery Tour is released in America.

February 1968 – George convinces The Beatles to visit the Maharashi in India.

August 22, 1968 – Cynthia files for divorce. Paul soon writes “Hey Jude” to comfort Julian.

November 11, 1968 – John and Yoko’s first of three experimental albums is released. The cover of Two Virgins is a photograph of the couple standing naked.

November 22, 1968 – The Beatles [The White Album] is released.

January 13, 1969 – Yellow Submarine is released.

January 30, 1969 – The Beatles perform together as a group for the final time on the roof of the Apple building, during the filming of Let It Be.

March 20, 1969 – John and Yoko marry in Gibraltar.

May 26, 1969 – Life with the Lions, the second experimental collaboration between John and Yoko, is released.

September 1969 – Lennon releases the single “Cold Turkey,” about his heroin withdrawl.

September 26, 1969 – Abbey Road is released.

October 20, 1969 – Wedding Album is released.

December 12, 1969 – Lennon’s impromptu concert in Toronto with Eric Clapton assisting on guitar is released as Live Peace in Toronto, 1969.

December 11, 1970 – Plastic Ono Band is released.

May 8, 1970 – Let It Be is released.

September 3, 1971 – John leaves the U.K. for New York, never to return.

September 9, 1971 – The album Imagine is released.

June 12, 1972 – John and Yoko release the more mainstream Sometime in New York City/Live Jam.

October 1973 – John travels to Los Angeles, later calling his eighteen-month separation from Yoko his “lost weekend.”

November 2, 1973 – John releases the album Mind Games.

September 26, 1974 – Sessions from the “lost weekend” are released as Walls and Bridges.

February 17, 1975 – Rock ‘N’ Roll is released.

October 5, 1975 – U.S. Court of Appeal overturns John’s deportation order, granting him residency.

October 9, 1975 – Sean Taro Ono Lennon is born at New York Hospital on John’s thirty-fifth birthday.

November 17, 1980 – The Double Fantasy album is released.

December 8, 1980 – Returning home from the studio with Ono, John Lennon is assassinated by Mark David Chapman in New York City while walking toward the entryway of his building.

Entrance to the Dakota building (1 West 72nd Street) where Lennon was shot. Photo by David Shankbone.

February 1982 – John posthumously wins the Album of the Year Grammy� for Double Fantasy.

January 27, 1984 – Milk and Honey is released.

February 10, 1986 – A concert recorded on August 30, 1972 is released as Live in New York City.

November 3, 1986 – A collection of alternate takes from Rock ‘N’ Roll and Walls and Bridges is released as Menlove Ave.

February 1992 – John receives the Grammy� Lifetime Achievement Award.

January 1994 – John is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist.

November 2, 2004 - A collection of recordings with John performing solo with a guitar is released as Acoustic.

Imagine by John Lennon

John Lennon, Photo (c) 1974 Bob Gruen.

Chronology Courtesy (c) JohnLennon.com

We all love receiving scraps, but constantly checking back to your scrapbook page can be tedious. How many of us have our scrapbook page open and are clicking refresh on it constantly!

With scrap alerts you can be on any orkut page and find out that you have received a scrap – that very minute. You could be browsing your friend’s photos, and find out “hey! I just got a new scrap.” Then you can click on the “Scrapbook” link to reply on the spot. This way you’ll be free to explore all of orkut, comforted in the knowledge that when you have received a new scrap, you’ll know about it that moment.

We’ll be rolling this feature out over the new few days for all users, but If you really prefer clicking the refresh button all day long, you can go to settings to disable to the feature.

I bet, this new feature with sky-rocket the phenomenal, Orkut Addiction. If not, help boost one’s daily dose of Social Networking.

Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a Welsh novelist, short story author and screenwriter of Norwegian parentage, famous as a writer for both children and adults.

His most popular books include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Witches and The BFG.

As Internet becomes the order of life for more and more Indians who depend on emails to stay in touch, their computers face an increasing virus threat with one in every 28 emails being infected, a recent study says. A study by messaging security and management services provider, MessageLabs, reveals that the number of malicious websites are on rise and a new virus StormWorm, which uses virtual postcards and YouTube video for its attack, are affecting computers.

For the entire article please visit The Economic Times.

In our quest to make orkut universally accessible, we’re now available in 5 new languages: Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. Indians have always been a vibrant part of the orkut community, and we continue to see more Indians joining orkut every day. It’s our goal to make orkut the ultimate tool for self-expression and communication, and we know that if we’re not translated into your native language, this becomes harder. So we worked closely with Googlers in our Indian offices to help develop the initial release of these languages. Since there are many different nuances to these languages, we want to hear your feedback. To help us improve the translation or tell us what language you’d like to see orkut in, you can visit our community on orkut: Indian Language Translations. We chose these languages initially because together they cover 80% of India. We do recognize India has more than 400 different spoken languages, but think these 5 are a good start, and we hope that introducing orkut in these regional tongues brings us closer to many more of you to bridge the gap between language and technology. Viewing the orkut site in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil or Telugu (or any one of our other 12 languages) is easy.

1. Click the settings button under your profile photo (or click the blue settings link at the top of any page).
2. On the general tab, choose your preferred display language from the drop-down menu at the top of the page.
3. Click save changes.

If you are having trouble reading languages on the “Settings” page, it is likely that your browser scripts have not been updated. For Internet Explorer, proceed to “Tools” and then “Windows Update”. Here you should accept the Windows XP Service Pack 2 update. All languages are included in this update.

We hope this will help many more people enjoy orkut in their own language every day.

“When you think Google, you picture primary colors; when you think orkut, you see blue. And though we’re updating the look, we’re staying true to blue. We’ve added some rounded corners and new icons that make orkut look a little more sleek and modern. Check out a screen shot of the new homepage. We’re rolling it out to groups of users at a time over the next week.”

Have your say - Do you think Orkut’s new design looks good? Yes, No or 50-50? Be a critic and/or a commentor by leaving a response below.

Large Version: PNG Format

I can’t wait to hear what they think about it?

Nehru in Allahabad, 1941. Picture Courtesy © Harappa. 

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others.

We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell. The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed! We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrowstricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.

On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation [Gandhi], who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.

Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death. We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good [or] ill fortune alike.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy. And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service. Jai Hind.