Video: 'Crime Inc Shortcuts | Ep7 | George Harrison Assassination Attempt'

(Thursday, December 30, 1999, approximately 3:30 a.m. GMT) — Former Beatle George Harrison, 56, was seriously injured this morning as he fought off a knife-wielding intruder in his mansion, Friar Park near Henley-on-Thames west of London.

When Harrison confronted the intruder, identified as a 36-year-old man, the musician was stabbed in the chest, suffering a punctured lung.

When Harrison screamed for help, his wife, Olivia, ran downstairs, where she saw him locked in a struggle and proceeded to hit the intruder over the head with a table lamp, which apparently stunned him into submission.

The Harrisons were taken to the Royal Berkshire Hospital where doctors discovered that George was half-an-inch from losing his life.

Video: 'George & Olivia Harrison Talk About 1999 Knife Attack'

“He has been stabbed on the right hand side of the chest, with the blade entering just below his collarbone. The knife narrowly missed a blood vessel connecting the heart and the head,” said medical director Andrew Pengelly. “If that had been ruptured, he would have perished within a matter of minutes from internal bleeding. He was extremely lucky. If the knife had gone in more than a centimetre either side, then it could have hit some very dangerous things, such as large blood vessels.”

Harrison would be discharged from hospital on Jan. 1, 2000, and allowed to return home.

The intruder was later acquitted of attempted murder by reason of insanity.

The attack on Harrison came 19 years and 22 days after the fatal shooting of fellow Beatle John Lennon at the entrance of his apartment building in New York City by a deranged fan.