There are 3 entries for this date: John Lennon, Guiseppe Verdi and Roger Williams.

On this date in 1940, John Lennon was born in Liverpool. A guitar player, Lennon first teamed up with Paul McCartney at the age of 15. In 1960, they founded The Beatles, a pop foursome that took the world by storm in 1962. On March 4, 1966, the London Evening Standard published an interview with John Lennon in which he claimed that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus: "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that. I'm right and I will be proved right. We are more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first—rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." When the interview was reprinted in America, it was greeted by record-burnings and boycotts. He subsequently apologized for his remarks. Lennon married his second wife, Yoko Ono, in 1969. Despite hit after hit, The Beatles broke up when McCartney left in 1970. Lennon issued his solo hit album, "Imagine," in 1971. When his son, Sean, was born, Lennon became a famous "house husband." In 1980, he came out of retirement to do some recordings. Lennon was shot to death by a deranged fan outside his Dakota apartment building in New York City on Dec. 8, 1980. In an interview Lennon and Yoko gave to Playboy, published in the January 1981 issue, Lennon said: ". . . this whole religion business suffers from the 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' bit. There's too much talk about soldiers and marching and converting. I'm not pushing Buddhism, because I'm no more a Buddhist than I am a Christian; but there's one thing I admire about the religion: There's no proselytizing." Lennon also wrote lyrics saying "I don't believe in Bible" or Jesus: "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." D. 1980.

On this date in 1813, Italy's great 19th century composer, Giuseppe Verdi, was born to a humble family in Roncole, Italy. He began music lessons with the village church organist at age 7. He was turned away from a conservatory in Milan, but studied privately. His first opera, Oberto, was produced at La Scala in 1839. Many operas would follow, including Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore and Traviata (1852), and Les Vepres Siciliennes (1855), which was criticized by clergy. The composer of Don Carlos (1867), Aida (1870), Otello (1886) and Falstaff (1893) was acclaimed internationally, and regarded by contemporaries as the greatest Italian composer of his century. Verdi's early personal life was marked by family tragedies, including the death of his sister at age 17, the death of his first son, and then of his first young wife, to illness. Verdi avoided writing ecclesiastical music, was an anti-Papist, and a rationalist. He was elected to Parliament (1861-1865) and sympathized with the 19th century campaigns for freedom. At the end of his successful career, Verdi shared his wealth, endowing the city of Milan with two million lira in 1898 to establish a home for aging musicians. He was well-known as an unbeliever and there was no religious service when he died, by his own request. Twenty-eight thousand mourners showed up for his funeral. D. 1901.

On this approximate date in 1635, Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for advancing the notion that the civil state should not enforce religious injunctions. Fleeing with four others and enduring deprivations in the wilderness, Williams settled in 1636 at a site in Rhode Island that he named Providence. Williams established a colony where Baptists like himself, Quakers and other nonconformists were welcomed. The settlement was chartered in 1663 by the British crown. The charter promised "no person within the said colony . . . shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called in question for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, and do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said colony." Today the Roger Williams National Memorial can be found on 4.5 acres of landscaped park on the grounds of the original settlement.