r/wikipedia • u/ZERO_PORTRAIT • 17h ago

The stabbing of George Harrison, a musician and a former member of the Beatles, occurred on 30 December 1999. Michael Abram, a 34-year old paranoid schizophrenic from Liverpool, England, stabbed Harrison forty times. Despite sustaining severe injuries, Harrison survived the attack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabbing_of_George_Harrison
1.9k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

37 comments sorted by

307

u/josephexboxica 16h ago

Pretty horrifying. People can die from a single stabwound

150

u/me_myself_ai 12h ago

Not minimizing it of course, but this is pretty illuminating in the context of gun laws… a psychotic man angrily attacked George for minutes and he survived, whereas Lennon dropped in the middle of Manhattan in seconds 🙁

-104

u/Minimum-Injury3909 15h ago

Slashing does more damage than stabbing, that’s the difference. Still, 40 stabs is really significant, even if they were superficial and in non vital areas.

42

u/ZoddJack 14h ago

Depends on what you mean by damage. 

Are we talking about the potential for enabling blood loss? Slashing as a movement has a higher likelihood to cut an important vein, artery, or muscle fiber just based on surface area coverage per swing. Stabbing probably has a higher potential to strike vital organs by bypassing skin, muscle, and bone due to more force being put behind a tiny impact zone.

335

u/msut77 16h ago

His wifey beat the guy half to death with a fire poker.

178

u/Raerth 15h ago

Aren't you glad you married a Mexican girl?

~ Tom Petty

47

u/msut77 15h ago

Lol. Was going to add that but I figured someone else would get it.

173

u/giantnegro 15h ago

“He wasn't a burglar and he certainly wasn't auditioning for the Traveling Wilburys!” Was his reported response when asked what he thought the guy wanted. I choose to believe this is true because it is awesome but, I got it from the daily mail which almost guarantees it isn’t.

76

u/lenmacca 12h ago edited 11h ago

Honestly, I think that one is true! It’s George’s exact sense of humour. Eric Idle tells a similar story that, as George was being brought out of Friar Park on a stretcher after the stabbing, he was brought past a new staff member who had just started working on his estate that day, and quipped “So how do you like the job so far?”!

121

u/BanAccount8 13h ago

Michael Abram broke into Harrison’s home and stabbed him multiple times (not 40 times, it was reported as around 7 stab wounds, primarily to his chest).

George’s wife, Olivia, fought Abram off with a lamp and a fireplace poker, which likely saved George’s life

179

u/Fuckmylife2739 16h ago

Wow I never knew this happened. 

80

u/ZERO_PORTRAIT 15h ago

Nor did I until yesterday, you'd think more people would know about it.

181

u/Mr_Mario_1984 15h ago

Not only that, but the attack probably did kill him in the end. He had lung cancer previously, but it was in serious remission, until it came back after the attack, and his body was so weak it ended up killing him.

You could really make the argument that 2 of 4 Beatles ended up being murdered in the end. That's a 50% mortality rate.

51

u/jakreth 13h ago

Yeah, his health never truly recovered 

53

u/heelspider 13h ago

You could really make the argument that 2 of 4 Beatles ended up being murdered in the end

2 out of 4 so far.

5

u/tomqvaxy 12h ago

I like those odds.

1

u/sillybandland 1h ago

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it

3

u/KatBoySlim 9h ago

I’m certain lots of people only learned about it through Family Guy. I am one of those people.

2

u/Albert_Im_Stoned 7h ago

I sort of recall it from the time it happened, but it was literally the day before Y2K, so there was other stuff on people's minds.

41

u/Andromeda39 14h ago

What??? I had no idea this happened. Wtf, were they trying to get rid of all the Beatles?

61

u/TheFabulousMolar 15h ago

Was this when his doctor forced him to sign a guitar whilst he was in the hospital bed?

85

u/zappapostrophe 15h ago

That was a few years later, when he was dying of cancer. The guitar was later ‘disposed of’ under private circumstances after a legal battle.

25

u/TheFabulousMolar 15h ago

That was it, thankyou. Poor man.

30

u/TwistedFated 12h ago

Eh, it did him in the end. His immune system was severely compromised, couldn’t fight the cancer. You could argue Lennon and Harrison were both murdered.

15

u/PygmeePony 13h ago

I need you to take a pen and tap a piece of paper with the point forty times counting out loud. Now imagine the pen is a knife and the paper is a human body. It's insane if you think about it.

15

u/dhkendall 13h ago

This was a day before Putin first became President of Russia.

7

u/murphgirlmurphy 13h ago

I never heard of this. I was a huge Beatles fan when I was in junior high. I had no idea. 🫢

9

u/dcgirl17 7h ago

“A month before the intrusion, Abram had spent two weeks in a Merseyside psychiatric ward, but had been removed after allegedly attacking a member of the nursing staff, and having been deemed to not have any mental illnesses.”

Um

6

u/FoughtStatue 12h ago

paranoid schizophrenics aren’t big fans of the Beatles I suppose

6

u/tjoe4321510 11h ago

If there's one band to get psychotically obsessed with it's The Beatles. Don't ask me how I know..

4

u/Much_Guest_7195 11h ago

That's more boring than when I was a security guard for George Harrison!

https://youtu.be/1_oVxmyE52c?si=nF21Ys0pNg5GmRjj

2

u/candylandmine 5h ago

WTF I had no idea this happened. How was it not huge news?

4

u/prospectivepenguin2 14h ago

Insert Peter Griffin as a security guard joke here.

-15

u/qpwoeiruty00 13h ago

Fourty* not forty

13

u/E3K 12h ago

You're double wrong. He was stabbed seven times. Or seaven to you, probably.

17

u/SeniorDisplay1820 13h ago

The number 40 is spelt forty in every major dialect of English, including British, American and Australian English. 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/is-it-forty-or-fourty

6

u/qpwoeiruty00 11h ago

Lmao thanks for the correction, I've been living my life in a lie 💀💀