Mar 29, 2012
Wikipedia links to all 122 references in Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie 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, The Catcher in the Rye, Eisenhower, vaccine, England’s got a new queen, Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye
Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser, Prokofiev, Rockefeller, Campanella,Communist bloc, Roy Cohn, Juan Perón, 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
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, U-2, Syngman Rhee, Payola, Kennedy, Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo
Hemingway, Eichmann, 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, JFK, blown away! What else do I have to say?
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again, Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, Punkrock, 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 shore, China’s under martial law, Rock-and-roller cola wars
(via Will Zone)
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I <3 this.
Dude. I’m going to be busy for a month.
and he did it all without google or wikipedia. classic.
Doesn’t it end with “I can’t take it anymore” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity
No?
You clever man. :)
Yes. Also there are lyrics in the chorus.
Crap…..Do you realize how much reading I have to do now….
He’s a brilliant man and a brilliant songwriter. I knew there was a lot in this song, but seeing it all written out….whew!
Do REM’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it”!!
I’d love to hear him do a follow up piece. It’s been long enough I think.
Want something funny he did this in ORDER of when they occurred from memory BEFORE there really was a useful internet.
So need to turn this into a wikibook…