“Across the Uni­verse” was writ­ten by John Lennon in 1969. On Mon­day, NASA will beam “Across the Uni­verse” lit­er­al­ly across the uni­verse, straight to Polaris, the North Star. Accord­ing to Wired Mag­a­zine, the song trav­el­ing at the speed of light will take 431 years to reach its final des­ti­na­tion, which is a mere 2.5 quadrillion miles away. Lennon must be smil­ing some­where.

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This looks like it’s the real deal — Yoko Ono’s trib­ute to John Lennon on YouTube. Among the video clips housed in the col­lec­tion, you’ll find footage that recap­tures the “bed-ins” that John and Yoko famous­ly staged in Mon­tre­al and Ams­ter­dam in 1969 to protest the Viet­nam War. As Lennon puts it, there’s no bet­ter way to protest the war than to “stay in bed and grow your hair.” That’s a form of protest that the lost slack­er in me can appre­ci­ate.

The footage is accom­pa­nied by the song, “Give Peace a Chance,” which was writ­ten dur­ing the bed-in. It was fol­lowed lat­er that year by “War is Over! If You Want It — Hap­py Christ­mas From John and Yoko.” The heart­break­ing YouTube video set to this song has over one mil­lion views.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts From Yes­ter­day
• What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot
• The Grey Video: Mix­ing The Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z
• The Com­plete Bea­t­les in One Hour (and The Sopra­nos in Sev­en Min­utes)

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Last night in Lon­don, Led Zep­pelin played its first full show togeth­er since 1980 (though they did play a short set at Live Aid in 1985, which I was for­tu­nate enough to see). Here’s the first video clip to make its way onto YouTube.