We Didn't Start the Fire - What I Think - Part 8

This is the eight post in my blog series about the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. I am writing about the significance of each item mentioned in the song. That is, what significance I THINK they have. I am not doing any research or looking anything up, so I could be totally wrong. (And I've been starting to take a little ribbing at just how wrong I have been on some of them. That's OK though, I think I've got today's nailed.)

More information about this blog series can be found in the series' first post.

Bardot - Bridgette Bardot was an American movie star. She won an academy award for best actress for her role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1962.

Budapest - Budapest is the capital of Hungary. The 1962 Winter Olympics were held there.

Alabama - Alabama was at the center of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. From courts ordering that black students be admitted to Ole Miss to the Birmingham Bus Boycott and the marching across the Montgomery bridge, much of the fight for civil rights that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lead occurred in Alabama.

Krushchev - Nikita Kruschev was the president of the Soviet Union. His regime was embroiled in the Cold War with the United States. One of his main goals was spreading communist influences to other nations. Kruschev once became so enraged during a speech at the United Nations that he took off his shoe and pounded the heel of it on his podium.

Princess Grace - Princess Grace was the princess of Monaco. She got married in the early 1960s. This was the first televised royal wedding and it was viewed by millions all around the world.

"Peyton Place" - Peyton Place was a television drama that was popular in the 1960s.

trouble in the Suez - The Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea. It is between Egypt and Israel. The trouble in this region was that these two nations were not getting along.

We Didn't Start the Fire - What I Think - Part 7

This is the seventh post in my blog series about the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. I am writing about the significance of each item mentioned in the song. That is, what significance I THINK they have. I am not doing any research or looking anything up, so I could be totally wrong. (And I've been starting to take a little ribbing at just how wrong I have been on some of them. That's OK though, I think I've got today's nailed.)

More information about this blog series can be found in the series' first post.

Einstein - Albert Einstein was a mathematical and physical sciences genius. He was born in Germany where he grew watching his father's businesses fail. As a youngster, his teachers didn't give his creative thinking much credit. Eventually, he published an academic paper in college which started to gain him acclaim in academic circles. After college, Einstein moved to America, where he oversaw the invention of the atomic bomb.

James Dean - Dean was born the small town of Fairmount, Indiana. During his early twenties he became a cooler than cool actor who caused many a teenage girl's heart to swoon. He died at the age of 25 when the Porsche Spider he was driving at a high rate of speed on Pacific Coast Highway in California crashed.

Brooklyn's got a winning team - The Brooklyn Dodgers won the world series in 1943.

Davy Crockett - There was a fad during the 1950s in which young boys wore coonskin caps like the one Davy Crockett wore back in the 1820s.

Peter Pan - This was a popular Broadway musical in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Sandy Duncan played the part of Peter.

Elvis Presley - Elvis was a popular rock and roll singer. He had more hit records than anyone else in America during the 1960s.

Disneyland - Walt Disney opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California in 1955.

We Didn't Start the Fire - What I Think - Part 6

This is the sixth post in my blog series about the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. I am writing about the significance of each item mentioned in the song. That is, what significance I THINK they have. I am not doing any research or looking anything up, so I could be totally wrong. (And I've been starting to take a little ribbing at just how wrong I have been on some of them. That's OK though, I think I've got today's nailed.)

More information about this blog series can be found in the series' first post.

Roy hn - Hn was the military commander of the South Korean forces battling against Soviet aggression to turn the whole country into a communist state.

Juan Peron - Juan Peron was Evita Peron's husband. Evita was the first femal leader of Chile, makeing Juan the first 'first gentleman' of the country.

Toscanini - Toscanini is a city in Italy. It is mentioned in the song here because the city was the place where Italy's president was assasinated.

dacron - Dacron is the Vietnamese word for 'chemical weapon."

Dien Bien Phu falls - Phu was the freely elected leader of Cambodia who fell to communist backed Khmer Rouge.

"Rock Around the Clock" - This was the first hit song of the rock and roll era. It was sung by Bill Haley and the Comets.

We Didn't Start the Fire - What I Think - Part 5

This is the fifth post in my blog series about the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. I am writing about the significance of each item mentioned in the song. That is, what significance I THINK they have. I am not doing any research or looking anything up, so I could be totally wrong. And if I have no clue, I am just taking my best guess - so don't use anything here for a U.S. history report source.

More information about this blog series can be found in the series' first post.

Joseph Stalin - Stalin became the president of the Soviet Union in the late 1950s. He took steps to further cool relations with the United States, thus escalating the Cold War. It was under his reign that the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik and greatly increased their nuclear arsenal.

Malenkov - He was the president of Yugoslavia when it was a part of the Eastern Communist Bloc. A pawn of the Soviet Union, he did as Moscow directed.

Nasser - He was the president of Egypt. During his administration he had plans to join with other Arab nations to eliminate Israel through a surprise military attack on the Jewish holiday of YomKippur. However, the Israeli Air Force quickly quashed the aggressors and the war only lasted a few days. Later, Nasser mellowed his stance on Israel and met with Israeli President Menachem Begin for peace accords. The talks were held in 1978 in Geneva Switzerland and were led by United States President, Jimmy Carter. Nasser was also one of the names mistaken by "Ronald Reagan" in a classic 1982 Saturday Night Live skit.

Prokofiev - He was the president of Switzerland in the 1960s. He remained neutral.

Rockefeller - John D. Rockefeller was a United States oil baron. He built his oil empire in the middle decades of the 20th century, much like Bill Gates built his software enterprise in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company was eventually found to be a monopoly and was split into smaller, stand alone companies like Amoco and Chevron.

Campanella - Roy Campanella was a great American athlete. Billy Joel seems to have a thing for boxers. And boxing rings a bell here, so I'm going to say he was a great boxer and that he had a tremendous record as a pro, but he had a tendency to falter in championship bouts.

Communist Bloc - This refers to the bloc of countries surrounding and including the Soviet Union. East Germany, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Poland come to mind as countries that were a part of this "Eastern Bloc."

We Didn't Start the Fire - What I Think - Part 4

This is the fourth post in my blog series about the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. I am writing about the significance of each item mentioned in the song. That is, what significance I THINK they have. I am not doing any research or looking anything up, so I could be totally wrong. And if I have no clue, I am just taking my best guess - so don't use anything here for a U.S. history report source.

More information about this blog series can be found in the series' first post.

Eisenhower - Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 35th president of the United States. He was preceded in office by Harry Truman and followed by John F. Kennedy. He oversaw the U.S.'s involvement in the Korean war while he was in office. The famous "I like Ike." campaign slogan is his.

vaccine - During the 1950s Dr. Jonas Sulk perfect the Polio vaccine. Soon after, a massive vaccination campaign took place in the United States. Polio was quickly conquered in the U.S.

England's got a new queen - In the late 1950s Princess Elizabeth became the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II. She is still the queen today.

Marciano - This refers to another boxer, Rocky Marciano. Who at first thought, I would pinpoint as the fictional boxer in the Rocky movies. However, the movie doesn't fit the timeline of the song. So, I am going to say that Marciano was an actual boxer who was quite the knockout king. As a matter of fact, he had a career record of 53 - 2, with 37 knockouts.

Liberace - Liberace was the sequined piano player. His talent with the ivories was only upstaged by his flamboyance.

Santayana goodbye - Manuel Santayana was the freely elected president of Cuba who was overthrown during the revolution in 1953 that brought communism and Fidel Castro to power in Cuba.

We Didn't Start the Fire - What I Think - Part 3

This is the third post in my blog series about the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. I am writing about the significance of each item mentioned in the song. That is, what significance I THINK they have. I am not doing any research or looking anything up, so I could be totally wrong.

More information about this blog series can be found in the series' first post.

Rosenbergs - The Rosenbergs were a husband and wife spy team. They spied on the American government for the Soviet Union and provided the Soviets with vast amounts of classified information. Eventually they were caught and spent the rest of their lives in prison.

H-bomb - As soon as the Soviet Union got the bomb in the early 1950s they competed with the United States in a nuclear arms race. Both Americans and Russians spent the better part of four decades in fear of nuclear obliteration by the other side.

Sugar Ray - Sugar Ray Leonard was a world champion boxer. This doesn't quite fit the general timeline of the song, but he was the light way champion of the world during the 1970s and 1980s.

Panmunjom - Panmunjom is the capital of Laos. It fell to a communist uprising in 1957.

Brando - Marlon Brando was a world famous American actor. He was known for being suave and debonair.

The King and I - The King and I is a book that was turned into a Broadway play.

The Catcher in the Rye - This is a book by J.D. Salinger. It had definite social undertones for one of the major issues of the its day, race relations.

We Didn't Start the Fire - What I Think - Part 2

This is the second post in my blog series about the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. I am writing about the significance of each item mentioned in the song. That is, what significance I THINK they have. I am not doing any research or looking anything up, so I could be totally wrong.

More information about his blog series can be found in the series' first post.

Joe McCarthy - McCarthy was a senator from Minnesota who went on a witch hunt for communists in the mid 1960s. This was during a time when countries were falling to communism like dominoes and McCarthy wanted to make sure there weren't any communists in American leadership roles.

Richard Nixon - Nixon won the presidency in 1968, then won reelection in 1972. Shortly thereafter he "resigned the presidency" in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.

Studebaker - Studebakers were cars built in South Bend, Indiana. Like most other smaller companies that made automobiles, Studebaker couldn't compete with the big three and went out of business in the 1960s.

Television - Television gained widespread household infiltration in the early 1960s. Half the TV sets in the country would be tuned to the same station during popular shows.

North Korea - No longer just Korea, North Korea became communist and a separate nation the South. The leader of the communist uprising was Pol Pot. He tried to make all of Korea communist, but settled on just the North under heavy resistance from the South.

South Korea - Separated from the North and maintained its status as a free county by holding off Pol Pot's Northern military.

Marilyn Monroe - A blond bombshell, Marilyn was a wildly popular singer and actress who frequently made the tabloids for her tawdriness. She was even rumored to have had an affair with JFK.

Summer Blog Series - We Didn't Start the Fire

This is the first post of what will be a pretty long and (I think) pretty fun blog series. The series will be about the lyrics to the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.

For each post in the series I will take a section of the lyrics and explain why each phrase is significant enough to be mentioned. Here's the catch, I will not do ANY research on the items mentioned in the song. I will just write what (I think) I know about each item and be relatively specific. And if I have no idea, I will just have to take my best guess. Sound like fun?

And hey kids, don't use this information for your 11th grade history reports. I may have no clue what I am talking about.

Oh and before I begin, let me explain what I think the song is about. I think the song is about times changing rapidly in the face of a world in conflict. The lyrics cover the time from just after World War II (at the beginning of the Cold War) through the late 1980s, which as it turned out was almost at the end of the Cold War.

Harry Truman - He was the President of the United States after World War II ended. He was preceded in office by Franklin Roosevelt and followed by Dwight Eisenhower.

Doris Day - Doris was an actress. She was the beauty of her day in the early 1950s. She was quite the pin-up girl.

Red China - This is a reference to the communist take over of China, led by Mao Tse Tung. I tried to write about how Tung took control and brought communism to China, but I couldn't even think of a reasonable guess.

Johnnie Ray - Johnnie is listed in reference to the 1950s civil rights movement. He was killed during a protest in Birmingham shortly before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the march across the bridge that leads into Birmingham.

South Pacific - This was a popular musical on Broadway in the late 1950s.

Walter Winchell - He was the newscaster who did the first live report from an active war zone (the Korean peninsula) in 1956.

Joe DiMaggio - Joe was a great baseball player. He played for the Yankees and dated Marilyn Monroe.

Now I'm going to click Publish Post, then look up who the heck Walter Winchell is (I keep thinking maybe he has something to do with a consumer product.) And feel free to comment away with corrections.