Good morning, Whitewater.
Saturday brings a day of partly sunny skies with a high of thirty-seven to the Whippet City. Sunrise today is 7:01 AM and sunset 5:16 PM, for 10h 14m 57s of daytime.
On this day in 1964, the Beatles arrive:
On February 7, 1964, Pan Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from London Heathrow lands at New York’s Kennedy Airport–and “Beatlemania” arrives. It was the first visit to the United States by the Beatles, a British rock-and-roll quartet that had just scored its first No. 1 U.S. hit six days before with “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” At Kennedy, the “Fab Four”–dressed in mod suits and sporting their trademark pudding bowl haircuts–were greeted by 3,000 screaming fans who caused a near riot when the boys stepped off their plane and onto American soil.
Two days later, Paul McCartney, age 21, Ringo Starr, 23, John Lennon, 23, and George Harrison, 20, made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, a popular television variety show. Although it was difficult to hear the performance over the screams of teenage girls in the studio audience, an estimated 73 million U.S. television viewers, or about 40 percent of the U.S. population, tuned in to watch. Sullivan immediately booked the Beatles for two more appearances that month. The group made their first public concert appearance in the United States on February 11 at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C., and 20,000 fans attended. The next day, they gave two back-to-back performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and police were forced to close off the streets around the venerable music hall because of fan hysteria. On February 22, the Beatles returned to England.
On this day in 1867, Laura Ingalls Wilder is born:
Wisconsin’s most famous children’s author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was born this day near Pepin. Although her family moved away a year later, it subsequently returned in 1870 and remained until 1874. It is this period that is immortalized in her first book, Little House in the Big Woods.