When the Beatles hit the stage at Carnegie Hall

During their brief touring years, the Beatles visited New York to play Shea Stadium, Forest Hills Stadium, and the Paramount Theater.

And they also held concerts at Carnegie Hall—the first rock band to do so.

Two shows were staged there on February 12, 1964, days after the group touched down in the U.S. for the first time at newly christened JFK airport and famously appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

“The Beatles appeared twice that evening at Carnegie Hall, lounging between shows in an elegantly appointed green room that had provided sanctuary to such icons as Tchaikovsky, Ravel, and Judy Garland,” wrote Bob Spitz in The Beatles: The Biography.

“They were totally relaxed, chain-smoking American cigarettes, not at all intimidated about performing at the most prestigious and legendary concert hall in America, if not the world.”

Beatlemania had gripped New York, and 2,900 fans had shown up. During the first show, at 7:45 pm, they screamed and ran up and down the aisles, leaving the band aloof and frustrated.

“There was no way for them to connect during the impenetrable wall of screaming that went up the moment they took the stage,” states Spitz. “After a meteoric appearance, lasting only 34 minutes, the Beatles dropped their instruments and headed for the wings.”

What the Times Magazine ran one Sunday in 1964

The New York Times has published a Sunday magazine since 1896; it was an attempt by new owner Adolph Ochs to set the Times apart from the papers that ran Sunday comic supplements and attract more intelligent readers.

I don’t know what the features were like back in the Gilded Age. But as this table of contents from the October 4, 1964 edition reveals, the articles and sections weren’t all that different from the stories the editors run today: rich kid/helicopter parent problems, national politics, art around the world, a little science and sports thrown into the mix, and of course, a crossword puzzle!