Read this: What it was like to be the first person to report John Lennon's death

40 years ago today, John Lennon was murdered. The story of his death is familiar now, but it’s hard to understand just how shocking the news of his killing must have been at the time to those who had grown up with The Beatles’ music and omnipresent place in postwar popular culture. The person who first shared this news was a young reporter working at Long Island’s WLIR radio station—a man named Steve North who wrote out his memories of the evening he told the world that Lennon was dead for The Daily Beast.

North was, in a grim coincidence, working on a report about gun control for the following morning’s broadcast when “one of the station’s student interns burst into the studio, red-faced and breathless” to say Lennon may have just been shot. North “grabbed an AP wire with the same sketchy information” and shared what we knew on-air before reaching a police sergeant “who provided more details on the shooting, but could not confirm the fate or identity of the victim.” When he dialed the police again after another broadcast, the same sergeant “said, on tape, that the victim was tentatively identified as Lennon, he was in serious condition, and the gunman had been apprehended.” Checking back in a bit later, the sergeant confirmed that the victim was indeed Lennon “and that he’s dead.”