when 73 million viewers watched them perform on The Ed Sullivan Show at 8 pm – about two-fifths of the American population. According to the Nielsen ratings audience measurement system, the show had the largest number of viewers that had been recorded for an American television program. The Beatles performed their first American concert on 11 February at Washington Coliseum, a sports arena in Washington, DC, attended by 8,000. They performed a second concert the next day at New York's Carnegie Hall, which was attended by 2,000, and both concerts were well received. The Beatles then flew to Miami Beach and made their second television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 16 February, which was broadcast live from the Napoleon Ballroom of the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach with another 70 million viewers. On 22 February, the Beatles returned to the UK and arrived at Heathrow airport at 7 am, where they were met by an estimated 10,000 fans. An article in The New York Times Magazine described Beatlemania as a "religion of teenage culture" that was indicative of how American youth now looked to their own age group for social values and role models. The US had been in mourning, fear and disbelief over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963, and contemporary pundits identified a link between the public shock and the adulation afforded the Beatles eleven weeks later. According to these writers, the Beatles reignited the sense of excitement and possibility that had faded in the wake of the assassination. Other factors cited included the threat of nuclear war, racial tensions in the US, and reports of the country's increased involvement in the Vietnam War. The first Beatles album issued by Capitol, Meet the Beatles, hit number one on the Billboard Top LPs chart (later the Billboard 200) on 15 February, and it maintained that position for 11 weeks of its 74-week chart stay. On 4 April, the group occupied the top five US single chart positions, as well as seven other positions in the Billboard Hot 100. As of 2013, they remained the only act to have done so, having also broken 11 other chart records on the Hot 100 and the Billboard 200. Author David Szatmary states, "In the nine days, during the Beatles' brief visit, Americans had bought more than two million Beatles records and more than 2.5 million