Beatles historian Bruce Spizer takes us back 60 years ago, when The Beatles performed for 8,000 screaming fans at the Washington Coliseum.

A Washington Post report of the band’s arrival from February 12 was titled “Beatles Arrive, Teen-agers Shriek, Police Do Their Duty, and That’s That.”

The Uline Arena has been left somewhat abandoned since it closed in 1986, but now its owner has unveiled plans for its future.

Part history tour on acid, part vaudeville, and part test of the audience’s patience, Solas Nua and the Performance Corporation’s much-anticipated Swampoodle comes storming into the Uline Arena, injecting some theater into the arm of a neglected corner of the District.

Last month, we greeted news about the upcoming The Performance Corporation/Solas Nua production of Swampoodle — an unseated performance with “eye-popping high-wire feats, roller derby smack-downs, big-track earthmovers, brass band music and scenes of a spectacular nature” held inside the long-abandoned Uline Arena/Washington Coliseum — with great excitement.

In 1941, Uline Arena opened on 3rd Street NE, in between L and M Streets right near Union Station. It now stands abandoned; its owner, Douglas Jemal, one of the biggest developers in the area, hasn’t done much with the site since he acquired it in a few years ago.

When it comes to today’s announcement that people can now purchase Beatles songs via iTunes, everyone seems either really excited or totally put off by Apple’s marketing. And while we’re sure that the arrangement, regardless of how anyone feels about it, will end up making both sides more money than any of us could possibly imagine (and also provide the cop-out gift of the holiday season to boot!), there is at least one really neat local thing about it: Apple is offering a free, complete copy of the Fab Four’s first American concert, held in D.C. at the old Washington Coliseum on February 11, 1964, two days after the band played The Ed Sullivan Show.