The date was May 24th 1969.

The place: The Sheraton Oceanus Hotel in Freeport.

Two famous guests checked in with their press agent.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono had come to The Bahamas intending to stage their second Bed-In for peace. New York had been their original destination, but Lennon had been denied entry because of his cannabis conviction.

The problem: the room wasn’t suitable, the heat wasn’t appealing and Freeport wasn’t practical enough for the American media campaign they had in mind. So their plan lasted barely a day!

The solution: their press agent, Derek Taylor got them on a flight to Canada the next day, but not before something rather special happened.

On May 25, 1969, while still at the Sheraton Oceanus, Lennon picked up his guitar and began playing an early version of “Give Peace a Chance.” Yoko joined him on the chorus, while cameraman Nic Knowland captured the moment on film.

And the footage of it survives!

It is now regarded as the earliest known recording of the song.

They left Freeport on May 25, flying first to Toronto and then on to Montreal. There, at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, they finally staged the famous second Bed-In.

And the little song Lennon had been trying out at the Oceanus in Freeport became something much bigger. During the Montreal Bed-In they recorded  “Give Peace a Chance”, surrounded by guests in the hotel room. It subsequently became one of the defining peace anthems of the era.

The Bed-In never happened in Freeport. But for one brief day at the Oceanus, Grand Bahama found itself at the beginning of a song that would soon be sung around the world.