On this day in 1985, Live Aid, a massive concert for African famine relief, takes place simultaneously in Philadelphia and London. In addition to 162,000 fans that attended the all-day event were 1.5 billion viewers worldwide who watched the show on MTV or other television stations. An estimated 75 percent of all radio stations around the world broadcast at least part of the concert.

Irish musician Bob Geldof, of the Boomtown Rats, organized the event. The list of bands read like a Who’s Who of rock and roll history: Among the participants were Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, the Beach Boys, Carlos Santana, Madonna, Sting, and Tina Turner. Several disbanded groups came together again for the day, including Crosby, Stills and Nash; The Who; and surviving members of Led Zeppelin, including Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones. All performers worked for free, as did many other concert workers. The production, which ordinarily would have cost $20 million to stage, cost only $4 million and raised more than $70 million for famine relief.

Despite the number of acts, the show ran surprisingly smoothly. Rotating stages allowed bands to set up and dismantle their equipment while other bands were onstage. Acts from one stadium were telecast across the Atlantic to the other. Such organization, however, did not characterize the group’s later charitable efforts: Live Aid was later criticized for its disorganized and slow efforts to channel aid to Africa.

On the 20th anniversary of Live Aid, musician Bob Geldof organized Live 8–a series of concerts in the G8 nations and South Africa that took place in early July 2005. Unlike Live Aid, the Live 8 concerts were orchestrated not to raise money, but political and social awareness of poverty in lesser developed countries. Hundreds of musicians performed at the concerts broadcast around the world.

The massive musical event preceded the G8 Conference and Summit held in Perthshire, Scotland, from July 6-8, 2005, where leaders agreed to donate $25 billion in additional aid to Africa by the year 2010.

(With thanks to History.com)