We Didn't Start the Fire

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We Didn't Start the Fire is a song by Billy Joel that lists major events in his lifetime, from 1949 to 1989, when the song was released on his album Storm Front. Joel has explained that he wrote this song as a result of his interest in history and his interest in teaching history if he had not become a rock and roll legend.

Historical events, persons and other items referred to in the song We Didn't Start the Fire

(1949)
(1950)
(1951)
(1952)
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- polio vaccine
- The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
- Rocky Marciano
- Liberace
- George Santayana
(1953)
(1954)
(1955)
- Albert Einstein
- James Dean
- Brooklyn Dodgers World Series win
- Davy Crockett television series
- Peter Pan film by The Walt Disney Company
- Elvis Presley
- Disneyland
(1956)
- Brigitte Bardot
- Hungarian revolution in Budapest
- Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Nikita Khrushchev
- Grace Kelly marries and becomes Princess Grace
- Peyton Place
- Suez Crisis
(1957)
(1958)
(1959)
- Buddy Holly
- Ben-Hur film
- Ham the Chimp
- Mafia
- hula hoop
- Fidel Castro
- Edsel
(1960)
(1961)
(1962)
- Lawrence of Arabia
- The Beatles
- University of Mississippi
- John Glenn
- Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson fight
(1963)
(1964-1989)
- birth control
- Ho Chi Minh
- U.S. presidential election, 1968 Richard Milhous Nixon
- Apollo 11
- Woodstock festival
- Watergate
- punk rock
- Menachem Begin
- Ronald Reagan
- Palestine
- aircraft hijacking
- Ruhollah Khomeini
- the war in Afghanistan
- Wheel of Fortune
- Sally Ride
- heavy metal music
- suicide
- foreign debts
- homelessness among Vietnam veterans
- AIDS
- crack cocaine
- Bernhard Goetz
- Medical waste found on beaches after being illegally dumped at sea.
- Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
- Rock and Roll
- cola wars
- information overload

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