On this day in 1994, England’s legendary Glastonbury festival was supposed to be celebrating its 25th anniversary, but instead found itself reeling after a shooting incident left a number of festival attendees injured.
On June 25th, 1994, countless fans turned up to the legendary festival to witness the second day of the three-day event. With acts such as Björk, Rage Against The Machine, Oasis, The Lemonheads, Radiohead, and much more on the year’s bill, plenty of music fans had packed onto the English farmland to witness musical history. However, many witnessed another sort of history instead.
At around 10pm on the Saturday evening, police were called after a man had begun firing an automatic pistol at the crowd near one of the festival’s stages. While no one was killed, five people – aged between 18 and 44 – were injured and taken to a nearby hospital to recover.
A 59-year-old witness noted that the shooting was related to drugs, but explained “I’m not going to stop the show because there’s one crazy guy with a pistol. There has been more violence this year than we’ve ever had before, but the overriding mood is one of a peaceful event.”
Sadly, the incident occurred only hours after the first death in the festival’s history, when a 23-year-old festival attendee passed away in the early hours of the day as a result of a drug overdose.
Check out Oasis‘ set at Glastonbury 1994:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8UEeYg7wDQ
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