We Didn't Start the Fire

[martianfrogz]

Interesting idea for a topic here- take the lyrics of We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel and explain all the events...sounds fun to me...

Harry Truman, Doris Day
Red China, Johnny Ray

South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon
Studebaker, Television

North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-bomb
Sugar Ray, Panmunjom

Brando, The King and I
And The Catcher In The Rye

Eisenhower, Vaccine
England's got a new queen

Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov
Nasser and Prokofiev

Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

Roy Cohn
Juan Peron
Toscanini, Dacron

Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock

Einstein, James Dean,
Brooklyn's got a winning team

Davy Crockett, Peter Pan
Elvis Presley, Disneyland

Bardot, Budapest
Alabama, Khrushchev

Princess Grace
Peyton Place

Trouble in the Suez

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Little Rock, Pasternak,
Mickey Mantle, Kerouac

Sputnik, Chou En-Lai,
Bridge On The River Kwai

Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle,
California baseball

Starkweather homicides,
Children of Thalidomide

Buddy Holly, Ben Hur
Space Monkey, Mafia

Hula Hoops, Castro
Edsel is a no-go

U2, Syngman Rhee
payola and Kennedy

Chubby Checker, Psycho,
Belgians in the Congo

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Hemingway, Eichman
Stranger in a Strange Land

Dylan
Berlin
Bay of Pigs invasion

Lawrence of Arabia
British Beatlemania

Ole Miss, John Glenn
Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcolm X
British Politician sex

J.F.K. blown away
What else do I have to say?

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh
Richard Nixon back again

Moonshot
Woodstock
Watergate, punk rock

Begin
Reagan

Palestine
Terror on the airline

Ayatollah's in Iran
Russians in Afghanistan

Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride,
heavy metal, suicide

Foreign debts
Homeless Vets
AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz

Hypodermics on the shores
China's under martial law
Rock and roller, cola wars,
I can't take it anymore

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

So, from the top, guys!

[martianfrogz]

Harry Truman- president of the United States. Dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During his second term, the Korean War was fought.

[Hagar]

Doris Day. Legendary singer & film star. She started her film career in 1948, the year before Billy Joel was born.

Clue. The song lists historical events & news items dating from 1949 when Billy Joel was born until 1989 when it was written. Bear in mind that he was raised in NYC. To make any sense of it you really need to associate a date with the events.

PS. He's 6 years younger than me so hearing the song or reading the lyrics brings back many memories of those times.

[dcunning30]

Starkweather homicides - In late 1950's in Nebraska, Charles Starkweather went on a totally pointless homicide spree.  Killed 11 people.  Movies were made either about him or were based on his events, which IMHO, were also just as pointless.

[martianfrogz]

Red China- Communists took control of China before WWII. China entered the Korean war to support North Korea.

[Mynameisnemo]

i'm sure this was brought up not so long ago, just found this vid on Youtube We Didn't Start The Fire.

one of the best Billy Joel songs imo.

[Boomtown Rat]

Red China- Communists took control of China before WWII. China entered the Korean war to support North Korea.

They took control after the war, in 1949.

[Mynameisnemo]

here's one that i can remember going back to page 7:

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/ ... 1136178022

i'm sure there's another one somewhere about

[Hagar]

They took control after the war, in 1949.

That's the whole point. http://www-chaos.umd.edu/history/prc.html
1949 was the year Billy Joel was born. As I said before, all these events took place between then & 1989 when the song was written.

If you care to have a search round there are complete websites dedicated to this song & its significance. Joel is said to have written it in defence of the "Baby Boomer" generation (my generation) who are often blamed for all the trouble in the world.

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

[Boomtown Rat]

I was just correcting Martian Frogz, I know what the whole point was about.  ;)

[Hagar]

[quote]I was just correcting Martian Frogz, I know what the whole point was about.

[martianfrogz]

Yeah, I misinterpreted the whole Red China thing...the way I read it, the communists took control of China before the war, when they had actually moved in. They hadn't taken control until 1949. Sorry about that...

[Boomtown Rat]

Yeah, I misinterpreted the whole Red China thing...the way I read it, the communists took control of China before the war, when they had actually moved in. They hadn't taken control until 1949. Sorry about that...

No problem, it's the History forum, not the "History Buffs/walking Encyclopedia board" now is it?  ;D

Always something new to learn in the great land of SimV  ;)

[martianfrogz]

[quote]

No problem, it's the History forum, not the "History Buffs/walking Encyclopedia board" now is it?

[beaky]

Stranger in a Strange Land:

Robert Heinlein's biggest seller, published in 1961 and oddly enough the first novel of his where he was free from worrying about tailoring his work for a specific market (he'd had the idea for some time, but was busy prior to that churning out sure-fire stuff for the sci-fi pulp and boys' magazine market so he could pay his bills). It's technically a sc-fi novel, but it easily spills over into general literature, being a broader satirical work containing Heinlein's typical well-integrated opinions on things he often thought about.
It's sort of a mix between Candide and the New Testament, although it is of course something entirely different from both.

Unfortunately, this story, which involved a special person who's mistaken for some sort of Messiah, was construed by many youngsters, eager for an alternative to the status quo of their society, to be some sort of manifesto or handbook on how to form a commune.
Caused more of a ruckus for that than for its brilliant takes on friendship, economics, society, sexuality and religion, and  even worse for the very private author, it caused him to suddenly find starry-eyed hipsters wandering onto his property, hoping to sit at the feet of their new guru.
This, as well as the controversy overshadowing the work itself, made him very uncomfortable, and Heinlein actually once expressed regret for having released it... surprising for a man who was definitley not known for regretting his actions or being timid about offending anyone.

It was groundbreaking stuff, very entertaining for such a deep topic, and every time I read it I find more to think about. He was probably my favorite author of all time in all genres.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land