50 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 was Billy Joel's third album to reach No. 1 in the US, and Mick Jones was recommended to him as producer by Eddie Van Halen.

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, who had just turned 40, fired back with the Korean War and the Suez Crisis, the seeds 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 own verdict on the tune, which he called a terrible piece of music, and it is the only song in his catalogue where he wrote the words before the music.

Which band's 2023 cover of We Didn't Start the Fire was panned for leaving out the COVID-19 pandemic?

Fall Out Boy's version runs from 1989 to 2023 but drops the chronological order, and Pete Wentz said the pandemic lost its place to a rhyme for Bush v. Gore.

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

Psycho's shrieking strings come from Bernard Herrmann's all-string score, written for a string orchestra because the budget would not stretch to a full ensemble.

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's polio vaccine, declared safe in April 1955, was never patented because he said the people owned it?

Jonas Salk gave that answer to Edward R. Murrow on television and was hailed as a miracle worker, choosing to take no profit so the vaccine could spread worldwide.

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

George VI died while Elizabeth and Philip were at Sagana Lodge in Kenya after a night at the Treetops Hotel, on the first leg of a tour bound for Australia and New Zealand.

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 transmitted for three weeks before its batteries died, and its 65-degree orbit carried it over virtually the whole inhabited Earth.

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

James Dean was nominated for East of Eden and again for Giant the following year, making him the only actor with two posthumous acting nominations.

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

Grace Kelly had won Best Actress for 1954's The Country Girl, and High Society, released in 1956, was her final acting role before she left for Monaco.

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

Jack Ruby's shooting of Oswald is one of the images on the burning backdrop that Joel pounds a table in front of in the We Didn't Start the Fire video; Ruby was a Chicago-born operator of Dallas nightclubs.

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

John Glenn is the only person to have flown in both the Mercury and Space Shuttle programs, and he had the name Friendship 7 hand-painted on his 1962 capsule.

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, after two Soviet cosmonauts, and her STS-7 flight was the first on which the orbiting Shuttle was photographed.

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 lasted 15 days before Red Army tanks crushed it?

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.

Where in Beijing did a lone man halt a column of tanks on 5 June 1989, a day after troops cleared it?

Tiananmen Square's student-led protests had run since 15 April, and China declared martial law on 20 May, mobilising at least 30 army divisions.

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 two soft-drink rivals, the last reference in We Didn't Start the Fire, hired Michael Jackson and Paula Abdul?

Coke and Pepsi's duel even singed its biggest star: pyrotechnics set Michael Jackson's hair on fire while he filmed a Pepsi commercial in January 1984.

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

The Ramones borrowed Paul Ramon, the stage name McCartney used in the Silver Beetles days, though none of the four were actually related.

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

Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, made six films in 1950, and All About Eve went on to collect 14 Oscar nominations.

Which frontiersman did Disney's 1954–55 TV serial, starring Fess Parker, turn into a $300 million 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's Holden Caulfield became an icon of teenage rebellion, and his school, Pencey Prep, sits in the fictional town of Agerstown, Pennsylvania.

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 spent his final years cared for by nuns at a convent hospital in Rome, and he also coined the line that only the dead have seen the end of war.

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

Saigon survives as the everyday name and, since 2025, the official name of the city's administrative centre, after the 1976 merger with Gia Dinh province created the larger city.

Woodstock's 1969 festival was actually held on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in which New York town, 60 miles from Woodstock?

Bethel got the festival only after the town of Wallkill, the original site leased for $10,000, set permit conditions that made building there impossible.

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 Invasion force, Brigade 2506, sailed from Guatemala and Nicaragua on 17 April and surrendered on 20 April; Cubans call the battle Playa Girón after its beach.

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 had taken off from Peshawar, Pakistan, and the exchange was dramatised in the 2015 film Bridge of Spies, with Tom Hanks as the negotiator.

Which Ford brand, sold only for the 1958–60 model years, flopped despite a huge advertising build-up?

Edsel was meant to be a fourth brand taking medium-price sales from Chrysler and General Motors, and the flop pushed Ford to invest over $100 million in compact cars in the 1960s.

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

Jake LaMotta's sixth Robinson fight was dubbed boxing's Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, and his Bronx Bull nickname came from a swarming, brawling style.

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

Ernest Hemingway's novella made him an international celebrity and a book-of-the-month pick in 1952, then won the Pulitzer the following May.

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 first denied taking payola and later admitted to his fans that he had accepted bribes; he had popularised the phrase rock and roll on mainstream radio in the early 1950s.

Which city's 1980 Summer Olympics did the United States boycott in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?

Moscow's snub was repaid four years later when the Soviet bloc skipped the Los Angeles Games, and Jimmy Carter had even proposed moving the Olympics permanently to Greece.

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

Peter O'Toole's eight Best Actor nominations began with Lawrence and ended with Venus in 2006, and the Academy gave him an Honorary Award for his career instead.

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

Love Me Do's later pressings used Andy White on drums, the version that also landed on the Please Please Me album, while the first issue kept Ringo Starr's take.

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, produced by Arif Mardin, topped a field that also included Don Henley's The End of the Innocence and Fine Young Cannibals' She Drives Me Crazy.

In which Korean border village was the July 1953 armistice signed, after truce talks that began in Kaesong in 1951?

Panmunjom's name now stands for the nearby Joint Security Area, where North and South still meet in blue huts that straddle the demarcation line.

Which two monkeys rode a Jupiter rocket in May 1959 as the first animals the US brought back alive from space?

Able and Baker endured 38 g on a 16-minute flight, and Miss Baker lived on until 1984 at Auburn University as the oldest squirrel monkey on record.

Which Pacific atoll hosted Ivy Mike, the first full-scale hydrogen bomb test, fired on its island of Elugelab in 1952?

Enewetak Atoll was part of the Pacific Proving Grounds, and the shot went ahead on 1 November because only a handful of days each month offered suitable weather.

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 followed up with the Frisbee?

Wham-O's hoop sales passed 100 million within two years, and the company went on to the Slip 'N Slide, the Super Ball and Silly String.