"The writing of “Thank You Girl” can easily be narrowed down to February of 1963 during their British nationwide tour with Helen Shapiro. Since February 11th, 1963 was the date for recording of their first British album “Please Please Me,” and the song did not appear on that album, it obviously didn’t exist yet since they would have premiered the song on that day if it had. And since Lennon later confirmed in 1980, as detailed in David Sheff's book "All We Are Saying," that the song “was one of our efforts at writing a single that didn’t work,” it had to have been written before February 28th, 1963, since this was the confirmed date when their next single “From Me To You” was written. Since “Thank You Girl” ended up as the b-side to that British single, it had to have been written sometime between February 11th and 28th of 1963, using the working title "Thank You Little Girl."
"On 4 February 2008, at 00:00 UTC, NASA transmitted the Interstellar Message "Across the Universe" in the direction of the star Polaris, 431 light-years from Earth. The transmission was made using a 70-metre antenna in the Deep Space Network's Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex, located outside of Madrid, Spain. It was done with an "X band" transmitter, radiating into the antenna at 18 kW. This was done to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the song's recording, the 45th anniversary of the Deep Space Network (DSN), and the 50th anniversary of NASA. The idea was hatched by Beatles historian Martin Lewis, who encouraged all Beatles fans to play the track as it was beamed to the distant star. The event marked the first time a song had ever been intentionally transmitted into deep space, and was approved by McCartney, Yoko Ono, and Apple Corps."
