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This summer marks 50 years since the Beatles released their legendary album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Liverpool is celebrating with a huge festival.

Sgt Pepper at 50 will include a musical take-over of Aintree Racecourse and a stunning light festival at Woolton’s Camp Hill - close to where Lennon and McCartney first met, plus many other events across the city.

The festival, which runs from May 25 to June 16, is likely to attract Beatles fans and media attention from across the world, putting Liverpool firmly in the spotlight once more.

As we look forward to the exciting event, here are 50 facts about what is widely regarded as the greatest album of all time:

1. Sgt Pepper was the Beatles eighth studio album.

2. It spent 27 weeks at number one in the U.K.

3. Paul MCCartney came up with the concept of Sgt Pepper, while on a flight back to London from Kenya in November 1966.

4. He decided he wanted to write a song about a military band in the Edwardian era.

5. When the band began recording the album, in the now legendary Abbey Road Studio Two, the first songs they wrote were Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane.

6. The songs were released as a double A-side in February 1967 but failed to reach the number one spot in the U.K.

7. That led to manager Brian Epstein insisting they were not included on the Sgt Pepper LP.

8. After recording the single Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, it was decided the whole album would be written as if performed by another band - giving the Beatles a chance to experiment with their sound.

9. It took the band almost five months to record the entire album - it was completed on April 21, 1967.

10. One of the artists who co-designed the cover was Sir Peter Blake, who also designed the cover for Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas, and the Live Aid poster.

11. The other designer was Blake’s then wife Jane Haworth, who became an advocate for feminist rights.

12. The concept of the cover was to have the band dressed in brass band uniforms, at an official ceremony in the park.

13. Each of the Beatles, plus Haworth, Blake and gallery owner Robert Fraser were asked which characters they would like included on the cover.

14. John Lennon’s requests included Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ - both were rejected.

15. Some people have questioned why Elvis Presley was not featured on the cover - Paul McCartney has said it's because he was “too important and too far above the rest to even mention”.

16. To create the image, Blake and Haworth pasted 57 life sized black and white pictures of the characters onto hardboard, and then Haworth tinted them by hand.

17. The image also includes four waxwork Beatles which were borrowed from Madame Tussauds in London.

18. A number of dummies finished off the collection, including a Shirley Temple doll wearing a ‘Welcome the Rolling Stones’ jumper.

19. Each of the Beatles are seen sporting large moustaches after George Harrison grew one as a disguise while in India.

20. The idea for writing the band’s name in flowers was inspired by a municipal floral clock Haworth saw in London.

21. On the back cover of the album, the lyrics were printed in full - it was the first time this had ever been done on an LP.

22. Mae West initially refused to have her image on the cover but relented after the Beatles wrote her a letter asking her permission.

23. Album covers at the time typically cost around £50 to produce. The final cost of the Sgt Pepper cover was nearly £3,000.

24. For their work, Blake and Haworth won the 1968 Grammy for Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts.

25. The album once came top in Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

26. But not everyone agreed - a 1998 poll of journalists, pop stars and DJs by the now defunct Melody Maker, voted it the worst record ever made.

27. Beatles producer George Martin once cited The Beach Boys album Pet Sounds as a major influence for McCartney at the time, saying: “Without Pet Sounds, Sgt Pepper never would have happened.”

28. The first track included on the album was When I’m Sixty-Four.

29. Producer George Martin showcased his musical skills on the album, playing a harpsichord on Fixing a Hole, a harmonium on Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite, and a Hohner Pianet on Getting Better.

30. The Beatles' first album Please Please Me cost £400 to produce - the final cost of Sgt Pepper was estimated to be £25,000.

31. The album features a high pitched tone, inaudible to the human ear, but that can be heard by dogs.

32. The BBC banned several of the album’s songs from its radio stations, including A Day In The Life, because of its lyrics ‘I'd love to turn you on’.

33. And Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, because of its lyric ‘Henry the Horse’, which contains two slang names for heroin.

34. It also banned Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, because people believed it the title stood for the hallucinogenic drug LSD.

35. But John Lennon denied the reference and said the song was inspired by a drawing his four year old son Julian had done.

36. The crowd cheer heard between the 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' and ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ was recorded by George Martin at a Beatles concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

37. The song Fixing A Hole is said to be partly inspired by Paul McCartney spending time restoring a farmhouse in Scotland.

38. The track She's Leaving Home was believed to be inspired by a feature in the Daily Mail about teenage runaways.

39. And the track Good Morning Good Morning was said to be inspired by an advert for Kellogg's Cornflakes.

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40. Sgt Pepper was the first Beatles album to have the same track listing for both the U.K. and US versions.

41. Before the album’s release the band took a copy round to their friend, The Mamas and the Papas singer Cass Elliot, who lived in a flat off the King’s Road. They turned the volume right up and played it in full, at 6am, with the windows wide open. The neighbours reportedly realised they were listening to unreleased Beatles work and no one complained about the noise.

42. The album was finally released on June 1, 1967.

43. It was the first album ever to be released simultaneously around the world.

44. It sold 250,000 copies in the first seven days alone.

45. And achieved 2.5 million sales worldwide within just three months.

46. None of the album's songs were released as singles at the time.

47. To date, it is the third best selling album of all time in the U.K., with 5.1m sales. Number one is Queen, Greatest Hits (6.1m) and second is ABBA, Gold: Greatest Hits (5.3m).

48. All of the album’s songs were written by Lennon and McCartney, apart from Within You Without You, which is by George Harrison.

49. Sgt Pepper was the best selling album worldwide of the 1960s.

50. To date it has sold more than 32m copies.