Beatles Quick Facts

During the week of 4 April 1964, The Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five positions. Neither feat has been matched by any other artist to date. The songs were "Can't Buy Me Love" (Capitol Records), "Twist and Shout" (Tollie Records), "She Loves You" (Swan Records), "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (Capitol), and "Please Please Me" (Vee-Jay). Seven other singles also made the chart: "I Saw Her Standing There" (Capitol), "You Can't Do That" (Capitol), "All My Loving" (Capitol of Canada), "Roll Over Beethoven" (Capitol of Canada), "From Me To You" (Vee-Jay), "Do You Want To Know A Secret" (Vee-Jay) and "Thank You Girl" (Vee-Jay).

The Beatles are the biggest selling artist of all time with music sales estimated to be over 1 billion units worldwide (EMI in 2005 put the figure at 1.3 billion). The Beatles are followed closely by Elvis Presley with Michael Jackson a distant third.

Ten of the fourteen tracks on Please Please Me, the Beatles' first studio album, were recorded in 9 hours and 45 minutes1 on February 11, 1963 for a cost of around around £400.