48 Fun Facts About We Didn't Start the Fire

Which 1989 Billy Joel album, produced by Foreigner's Mick Jones, carries We Didn't Start the Fire?

Storm Front became Billy Joel's third US No. 1 album, made after a band shake-up that ended bassist Doug Stegmeyer's 15 years at his side.

Whose 21-year-old friend told Billy Joel it was a terrible time to be 21, sparking We Didn't Start the Fire?

Sean Lennon's friend insisted nothing had happened in the fifties, and Joel fired back by asking whether he had never heard of the Korean War, the seed of the lyric.

Which everyday noise did Billy Joel compare the melody of We Didn't Start the Fire to in a 1993 interview?

A dentist drill was Joel's verdict on the tune in a 1993 documentary; he wrote the words first, which he rarely does, and blamed that for the lack of melody.

Which band's 2023 update of We Didn't Start the Fire covers 1989 onwards yet never mentions the COVID-19 pandemic?

Fall Out Boy's update abandons the original's rough chronological order, and Pete Wentz said the pandemic was left out on purpose.

Which Hitchcock thriller's screeching violins are quoted in We Didn't Start the Fire when it is name-checked?

Psycho's shrieking violins come from Bernard Herrmann's strings-only score, which he said gave a black-and-white sound to match the black-and-white film.

Which singer, killed in a 1959 Iowa plane crash, gets a mimicked vocal hiccup in We Didn't Start the Fire?

Buddy Holly died alongside Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper near Clear Lake, Iowa, after chartering a plane to escape the freezing tour buses.

Which researcher, asked on television who owned the patent on his 1955 polio vaccine, said the people did?

Jonas Salk gave that answer to Edward R. Murrow, asking 'Could you patent the sun?', and the vaccine was never patented.

Which king's death in February 1952 reached his daughter Elizabeth at a Kenyan lodge, making her queen mid-tour?

George VI died in his sleep at Sandringham on the night Elizabeth spent at Treetops, where a fellow guest wrote that she climbed a tree a princess and came down a queen.

Which composer of Peter and the Wolf died on 5 March 1953, the same day as Joseph Stalin?

Sergei Prokofiev's funeral drew about 30 mourners, because the crowds flooding the city centre to mourn Stalin made the Composers' Union hall impossible to reach.

Which seamstress's December 1955 arrest on a Montgomery, Alabama bus launched a 381-day boycott?

Rosa Parks had stopped at a drugstore on her way to the bus, and the boycott she set off ended only when Browder v. Gayle ruled bus segregation unconstitutional.

Which president held up a Chicago Tribune edition that wrongly announced his defeat two days after the 1948 election?

Harry Truman was handed the early edition at St. Louis Union Station on his way to Washington, and the Tribune had once called him a nincompoop.

Which Soviet satellite, launched in October 1957, beeped a signal that amateur radio operators could pick up worldwide?

Sputnik 1 beeped for three weeks until its batteries died, and the shock of its launch led the United States to create NASA the following year.

Which actor died at 24 in a 1955 Porsche crash, then received the first posthumous Best Actor Oscar nomination?

James Dean made only three films as a star, and two of them, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, opened after his death, the second bringing another posthumous nomination.

Which Oscar-winning actress retired at 26 to marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco in April 1956?

Grace Kelly met Rainier at a photo session arranged while she led the US delegation to the 1955 Cannes Film Festival, and High Society was her last film.

Which Dallas nightclub owner shot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television two days after the Kennedy assassination?

Jack Ruby's shooting of Oswald appears on the burning backdrop of the song's video; his death sentence was overturned in 1966, but he died before the new trial could begin.

Which astronaut, the first American to orbit Earth in 1962, flew again on shuttle Discovery at age 77?

John Glenn won his Discovery seat by volunteering as a test subject for studies of ageing, making him the only person to fly in both the Mercury and Shuttle programs.

Who became the first American woman in space aboard Challenger's STS-7 mission in June 1983?

Sally Ride was only the third woman in space: Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova had flown 20 years earlier, long before NASA accepted women as astronauts.

In which California city did Disneyland open in July 1955, its chaotic preview day remembered as Black Sunday?

Anaheim's 160 acres of orange groves and walnut trees were chosen after a Stanford Research Institute study, and the park is the only one built under Walt Disney's direct supervision.

Which country's 1956 uprising against Soviet control was crushed within weeks by Red Army tanks?

Hungary's revolt saw Imre Nagy's government declare withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, and about 200,000 people fled the country afterwards, most of them to Austria.

Which game show, on air since 1975, saw Pat Sajak replace Chuck Woolery as host in 1981?

Wheel of Fortune grew out of a 1973 Merv Griffin pilot called Shopper's Bazaar, whose shopping element was added at the request of NBC's daytime chief Lin Bolen to add glamour.

Which Apollo 11 astronaut stayed alone in lunar orbit aboard Columbia while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon?

Michael Collins inspected the lunar module Eagle as it pirouetted before him, checking its landing gear had deployed before it headed down to the surface.

Near which Beijing landmark did a lone man halt a column of tanks on 5 June 1989?

Tiananmen Square had been cleared by force the day before; on nearby Chang'an Avenue the man climbed onto the lead tank to speak to its crew before being pulled away.

Which physicist, who died in Princeton in April 1955, was offered the presidency of Israel after Chaim Weizmann's death?

Albert Einstein declined, writing that he was deeply moved but at once saddened and ashamed that he could not accept, while Ben-Gurion had privately fretted about what to do if he said yes.

Which pop star's hair caught fire while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984, at the height of the cola wars?

Michael Jackson suffered second-degree burns to his scalp when pyrotechnics misfired on set, and the cola wars he fronted are the last thing Billy Joel lists in the song.

Which Queens band, formed in 1974, had every member adopt the same fake surname, inspired by a Paul McCartney alias?

The Ramones took the name from Paul Ramon, McCartney's early stage alias, and their July 1976 London shows, where they met the Sex Pistols and the Clash, helped fire up British punk.

Which actress got small roles in All About Eve and The Asphalt Jungle, both 1950, through agent Johnny Hyde?

Marilyn Monroe's agent Johnny Hyde won her a seven-year contract with 20th Century-Fox in December 1950, then died of a heart attack days later.

Which frontiersman did Disney's 1954–55 TV serial, starring Fess Parker, turn into a nationwide coonskin-cap craze?

Davy Crockett's five episodes were re-cut into two cinema films, and historians credit them with making him the most famous frontiersman in American history.

Which 1951 novel about a teenager expelled from a Pennsylvania prep school has sold more than 65 million copies?

The Catcher in the Rye was J. D. Salinger's only novel, and the attention it brought drove him into seclusion in Cornish, New Hampshire, where he published nothing after 1965.

Which Soviet leader's 1956 Secret Speech to a closed Party congress session denounced Stalin's cult of personality?

Nikita Khrushchev's speech was meant to stay secret, but it was known worldwide within two weeks and The New York Times printed it in full that June.

Whose cover of The Twist topped the Hot 100 in both 1960 and 1962, a first for any single?

Chubby Checker's stage name was Dick Clark's wife's idea, a play on Fats Domino, after she heard him impersonate the singer.

Which philosopher, who died in Rome in 1952, warned that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it?

George Santayana wrote the warning in The Life of Reason, then resigned from Harvard in 1912 and never returned to America, ending his days in a Rome nursing home run by nuns.

Which city, capital of South Vietnam until its capture on 30 April 1975, was renamed for Ho Chi Minh in July 1976?

Saigon's fall came hours after the largest helicopter evacuation in history lifted Americans and South Vietnamese out of the city.

Woodstock's 1969 festival was actually held on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in which New York town?

Bethel got the festival only after the town of Wallkill, where the promoters had already leased a site, refused to let it go ahead.

Which failed April 1961 landing by 1,400 CIA-backed Cuban exiles was defeated by Castro's forces within three days?

The Bay of Pigs invaders, Brigade 2506, surrendered within three days, and Cuba later freed more than 1,100 prisoners in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine.

Which Holocaust organiser, living in Argentina as Ricardo Klement, was seized by Mossad in 1960 and tried in Jerusalem?

Adolf Eichmann's identity was confirmed by comparing covert photos of his ears with his SS file, and Hannah Arendt's account of the trial coined the phrase the banality of evil.

Which U-2 pilot, shot down over the USSR in May 1960, was later swapped for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in Berlin?

Francis Gary Powers's capture exposed a cover story: Washington had claimed a weather research plane strayed off course, until the Soviets revealed they held the pilot alive.

Which boxer, subject of Scorsese's Raging Bull, fought Sugar Ray Robinson a sixth time on Valentine's Day 1951?

Jake LaMotta lost when the referee stopped the fight in the 13th round, but he never went down, and the beating became known as boxing's Saint Valentine's Day Massacre.

Which 1954 Nobel laureate, author of The Old Man and the Sea, died at his home in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961?

Ernest Hemingway survived two plane crashes in quick succession in Africa in 1954, and the injuries left him in pain and ill health for the rest of his life.

Which politician lost the 1960 presidency and the 1962 California governorship, then won the White House in 1968?

Richard Nixon told reporters after the 1962 defeat that they would not have him to kick around anymore, calling it his last press conference.

Which DJ who popularised the phrase rock and roll was fired by WABC in 1959 after refusing to deny taking payola?

Alan Freed pleaded guilty to commercial bribery in 1962 and received a fine and a suspended sentence, but his radio career never recovered and he died in 1965, aged 43.

Which city's 1980 Summer Olympics did the United States and dozens of other nations refuse to attend?

Moscow's Games were boycotted over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Soviet bloc stayed away from Los Angeles four years later.

Which actor, nominated eight times for an acting Oscar without ever winning, starred in 1962's Lawrence of Arabia?

Peter O'Toole at first asked the Academy to hold off on its Honorary Award, saying he was still in the game and might yet win one outright.

Which Beatles debut single of 1962 peaked at number 17 and swapped Ringo for a session drummer on later pressings?

Love Me Do was re-recorded a week later with session man Andy White on drums and Ringo Starr demoted to tambourine, the take used on the Please Please Me album.

Which Bette Midler hit beat We Didn't Start the Fire to Record of the Year at the 1990 Grammy Awards?

Wind Beneath My Wings had already been recorded by Roger Whittaker, Lou Rawls and others before Midler sang it for her 1988 film Beaches and took it to No. 1.

Where was the July 1953 Korean armistice signed, after truce talks that began in Kaesong in 1951?

Panmunjom was a village that no longer exists; its name now stands for the nearby Joint Security Area, whose blue huts straddle the demarcation line.

Which Pacific atoll hosted Castle Bravo in 1954, the most powerful nuclear test the United States ever carried out?

Bikini Atoll's Castle Bravo blast was about 1,000 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb, and its fallout forced the evacuation of people living on nearby atolls.

Which Rockefeller brother, Gerald Ford's vice president, did Billy Joel say he meant in We Didn't Start the Fire?

Nelson was governor of New York from 1959 to 1973, yet every other item in that verse belongs to 1953, the year Winthrop's divorce made headlines.

Which toy company sold 25 million hula hoops in four months in 1958 and also made the Frisbee a household name?

Wham-O borrowed the idea from the bamboo exercise hoops used by Australian children, remade them in plastic, and sold more than 100 million within two years.