On Feb. 11, 1964, at approximately 3:04 p.m., the Beatles entered D.C. to later play before a sold-out crowd at the Washington Coliseum. Only a few months earlier, the group had been largely unknown in the United States. But on this cold February day, D.C. fans braved 8 inches of snow to hear the band play the first live concert in the United States.

For those not as bold, CBS filmed the set and released it later as a closed-circuit concert in theaters. Much later, this would be re-released as “Live at the Washington Coliseum, 1964,” lauded by fans one of the highest quality recordings of their concerts.

Before the concert, the group gave a light and jubilant press interview in the cavernous Washington Coliseum, located adjacent to the Union Station rail yards. When asked what they thought of then-President Lyndon Johnson, Ringo Starr quipped: "We don't know. We've never met the man... (pause) Does he buy our records?"

Later, as it came time to play, the concert was over capacity by about 1,000 people according to some estimates. But even with a small stage about the size of a boxing ring, both the audience and the performers were delighted to be there. Every few songs, in fact, the band oriented their setup to face a new part of the crowd. In return, audience members squealed, screamed, and threw jelly beans onto the stage. (Earlier in the week, the Beatles mentioned their fondness for the candy in a New York interview.)

Now known as Uline Arena, the Washington Coliseum has seen better days. At one point, it was a waste management site and today it is used for parking. Renovation plans for this historic site have languished for quite a while. But 47 years ago today, it hosted one of world's best musical acts ever.

A sampling:

This is Snyder's team; he was intimately involved in assembling it. He keeps his favorite players on speed dial, watches practices on the sidelines and demands face time and explanations from the coaches he personally hired. Whatever you think of Zorn, he is Snyder's own selection. It was Snyder who told Joe Gibbs, "He would make a great head coach." He is personally responsible for naming Vinny Cerrato, a proven failure, executive vice president of football operations, for the Redskins' lack of core strength, for their inability to power the ball in the red zone, which is thanks to his decade of neglect of the interior lines in favor of big free agent signings.

But no sampling can do the column justice. It's all wondrous.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Reading recommendations? Nats give fans an unforgettable "Bang! Zoom!" when down to last strike? Thom Loverro says forget "Bang! Zoom!" Ted Leonsis says Caps better than Jesus? When's the wake for Hoop Dreams? Say it ain't so, Susie Kay?)

My only problem with Jenkins' article is that nowhere in the piece is there a disclosure that she has written books with Lance Armstrong, or any mention of all the allegations that Armstrong doped while winning all those Tour de Frances.

(Whoa! Where'd that come from? Enough with the Lance Armstrong! Innocent til proven guilty! Heard of it? Geezus Chrysler! Let Sally do God's work!)

OK, OK! Go read Sally Jenkins' column again!

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Sure, it's early in the football season, but I'm certain that nothing the Redskins do this year will wow their fans as much as last night's Nats' win over the Mets wowed those spectating or otherwise watching or (in my case) listening.

Justin Maxwell's grand slam with his team down a run in the bottom of the last inning of the last home game of the year—Maxwell was down to his last strike, in fact—gave me the sort of thrill chills I hadn't gotten since Boise State beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl a few years ago.

Sure, the game meant nothing in the big scheme—the Mets are huge losers, and the Nats have already wrapped up not only last place in the division for 2009, but the worst record in the majors. But the rest of the season meant less than nothing while Charlie Slowes called Maxwell's HR with the fans going crazy crazy crazy in the background. Sports magic, it was.

No matter how lousy this team is, the ending was enough to make you think: Wait 'til next year!

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Thom Loverro, alas, says don't wait 'til next year.

Loverro predicts very dire times for the Washington Nationals, at least at the turnstiles. By the end of next season, Loverro says, Nats management will look back wistfully at the 2009 debacle.

This organization is not on the brink of turning around the Jim Bowden culture that buried D.C. baseball in a deep, dark hole that will take years to dig out of. Let's say the Nationals wind up with 57 wins to show for 2009. A 10-win improvement would be a dramatic jump. That means about 67 wins next season. Think that will cause a spike in attention and attendance?

Sometime before the start of the season, Kasten has traditionally shared the season-ticket sales for the season. This year he did not, but we got a pretty good idea from some of the sparse crowds at Nationals Park that it is somewhere around 12,000 – down from the high of 22,000 during the inaugural 2005 season at RFK Stadium. There's no reason not to believe that next year it could fall below 10,000.

Loverro's always right. I just wish he'd've waited a day or two before killing my post-Justin Maxwell buzz with reality.

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As the Washington Capitals open their regular season tonight, the Washington Times previews the season with a story headlined "Leonsis: Capitals set for dynasty."

Considering how smart and humble Ted Leonsis had been with the media in recent years, and with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, the superstar leaders of the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins, both being younger than Alex Ovechkin, I found that headline startling.

Ted would call his team a dynasty?

Well, I've read the story once and scanned it a bunch of times, but I can't find any quote where the Caps owner uses the word "dynasty" or claims that the team is "set for dynasty." I see him sorta bragging that he likes the way his organization is set up, but no "dynasty" claims. Maybe I'm just missing something. The Times' Web site does godawful things to my browser, no foolin'.

But if I'm not missing anything: It's like those "John Lennon: Beatles More Popular Than Jesus" headlines that helped take the Fabs off the road in 1966.

Only, Lennon actually said that.

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Tonight's the goodbye party for the Hoop Dreams Scholarship Fund at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

The charity was founded more than a decade ago by then-H.D. Woodson teacher Susie Kay.

Kay decided to dissolve the fund earlier this year because of dwindling charity dollars going to group's like hers. From the start, she worked the schedule of a dairy farmer. In the end, Hoop Dreams subsidized the college educations of more than 1,000 kids from D.C. public high schools.

She made the city a better place.

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The show is yet another link to an amazing and underpublicized chain in the area's pop cultural history. It goes back to brothers Izzy and Irvin Feld, who were literally snake oil salesmen growing up in Hagerstown in the 1920s, and later started a record business in the 1940s out of their store, Super Cut Rate Drugs, a pharmacy on 7th St. NW in Shaw.

The record retailing operation, which quickly turned into a cash cow by catering to the city's otherwise ignored black pop fans, led the Felds to form a production company that booked concerts and other large entertainment events.

The Felds took over management of Ringling Bros. in 1957, and bought the circus whole a decade later.

Musically, among the Felds claims to fame are discovering Paul Anka, promoting Buddy Holly's last tour in 1959, and producing some shows on the Beatles U.S. tours, including a Baltimore Civic Center concert in 1964 and the DC Stadium show in August 1966, held about week before the Fab Four gave up live performances altogether.

(A case could easily be made that without the Felds, Beatlemania never would have happened on

our side of the pond, since the brothers' budget-cutting decisions to use inferior and often heat-less buses and to institute a no-days-off scheduling policy on the Holly tour inspired the headliner to rent his own plane, which crashed in a snowstorm in Clear Lake, Iowa in February 1959. Had Holly lived and continued to spread his songwriting genius, America likely would have had much less demand for the similar sort of pop music the Beatles used to take over Britain in the early 1960s.)

Irvin Feld's son, Kenneth Feld, took over the family business in 1984 and still runs the circus out of Feld Entertainment's Vienna headquarters.

The Feld family, for all its contributions to the entertainment world and loyalty to the DC area — once more: these folks brought the Beatles here, literally and figuratively — has almost no public presence in its hometown.

Sadly, the only publicity the Felds get comes from the oddities surrounding Irvin's daughter Karen Feld, a gossip columnist for the DC Examiner when that paper hit town in 2005.

She's currently suing brother Kenneth for a 2007 incident with Kenneth at an aunt's memorial service.

Talk about a family circus.