The boys from Liverpool, the Fab Four, are feted worldwide every June 25 (commemorating the day in 1960 they formed as a group) on Global Beatles Day.

From their first hit in the UK (“Love Me Do” in late 1962) through their last concert song (“Long Tall Sally” at Candlestick Park on Aug. 29, 1966), the most successful band in history sold more than 600 million records worldwide (178 million in the U.S.), won 10 Grammies and an Academy Award, had 20 No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and were collectively named one of the 20th century’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine.

The first week of April 1964, the Beatles achieved an unprecedented feat: They held all top five spots on the Billboard chart.

Early on, the band went by several other names: the Blackjacks, the Quarrymen, Johnny and the Moondogs, the Beatals and the Silver Beetles.

George Harrison and Ringo Starr had no middle name. John Lennon changed his from Winston to Ono after he married Yoko. James Paul McCartney went by his middle name.

The Beatles formed their group on an island northwest of Spain and officially broke up at Disney World.
More than 70 people appear on the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” including Albert Einstein, Laurel and Hardy, Karl Marx, Marilyn Monroe, Edgar Allen Poe and Mae West.

The group’s shortest hit song, “From Me to You,” clocks in at one minute, 57 seconds. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is nearly eight minutes long and contains only 14 different words.

Lennon and McCartney also wrote songs for Badfinger, Peter and Gordon and others.

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