19.7.11

Learning the resent History with Billy Joel !




1949

Joe McCarthy, the US Senator, gains national attention and begins his anti-communist crusade with his Lincoln Day speech.


]1951

[]1952

[]1953

  • Joseph Stalin dies on March 5, yielding his position as leader of the Soviet Union.
  • Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Stalin for six months following his death. Malenkov had presided over Stalin's purges of party "enemies", but would be spared a similar fate by Nikita Khrushchev mentioned later in verse.
  • Gamal Abdel Nasser acts as the true power behind the new Egyptian nation as Muhammad Naguib's minister of the interior.
  • Sergei Prokofiev, the composer, dies on March 5, the same day as Stalin.
  • Winthrop Rockefeller and his wife Barbara are involved in a highly publicized divorce, culminating in 1954 with a record-breaking $5.5 million settlement.[9]
  • Roy Campanella, an African American baseball catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, receives the National League's Most Valuable Player award for the second time.
  • Communist bloc is a group of communist nations dominated by the Soviet Union at this time. Probably a reference to the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.

[]1954

[1955

[]1956

[]1957

[]1958

[]1959

  • Buddy Holly dies in a plane crash on February 3 with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper, in a day that had a devastating impact on the country and youth culture.
  • Ben-Hur, a film based around the New Testament starring Charlton Heston, wins eleven Academy Awards.
  • Space Monkey: Able and Miss Baker return to Earth from space aboard the flight Jupiter AM-18.
  • Mafia are the center of attention for the FBI and public attention builds to this organized crime society with a historically Sicilian-American origin.
  • Hula hoops reach 100 million in sales as the latest toy fad.
  • Fidel Castro comes to power after a revolution in Cuba and visits the United States later that year on an unofficial twelve-day tour.
  • Edsel is a no-go: Production of this car marque ends after only three years due to poor sales.

[]1960

[]1961

[t]1962

[]1963

  • Pope Paul VI: Cardinal Giovanni Montini is elected to the papacy and takes the regnal name of Paul VI.
  • Malcolm X makes his infamous statement "The chickens have come home to roost" about the Kennedy assassination, thus causing the Nation of Islam to censore him.
  • British politician sex: The British Secretary of State for War has a relationship with a showgirl, and then lies when questioned about it before the House of Commons. When the truth came out, it led to his own resignation and undermined the credibility of the Prime Minister.
  • JFK, blown away! What else do I have to say?: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22 while riding in an open convertible through Dallas.

[]1965

  • Birth control: In the early 1960s, oral contraceptives, popularly known as "the pill", first go on the market and are extremely popular. Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 challenged a Connecticut law prohibiting contraceptives. In 1968, Pope Paul VI released a papal encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae which declared artificial birth control a sin.
  • Ho Chi Minh: A Vietnamese communist, who served as President of Vietnam from 1954–1969. March 2 Operation Rolling Thunder begins bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply line from North Vietnam to the Vietcong rebels in the south. On March 8, the first U.S. combat troops, 3,500 marines, land in South Vietnam.

[]1968

[]1969

  • Moonshot, the first manned lunar landing, successfully lands on the moon.
  • Woodstock: Famous rock and roll festival of 1969 that came to be the epitome of the counterculture movement.

[]1974

  • Watergate: Political scandal that began when the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC was broken into. After the break-in, word began to spread that President Richard Nixon (a Republican) may have known about the break-in, and tried to cover it up. The scandal would ultimately result in the resignation of President Nixon, and to date, this remains the only time that anyone has ever resigned the Presidency.
  • Punk rock: The Ramones form, with the Sex Pistols following in 1975, bringing in the punk era.

[]1977

(Note that these two items, while later chronologically than the two 1976 items, come immediately before them in the song.)

[]1976

(Note that these two items, while earlier chronologically than the two 1977 items, come immediately after them in the song)


[]1983

  • Wheel of Fortune: A hit television game show which has been TV's highest-rated syndicated program since 1983.
  • Sally Ride: In 1983 she becomes the first American woman in space. Dr. Ride's quip from space "Better than an E-ticket", harkens back to the opening of Disneyland mentioned earlier, with the E-ticket purchase needed for the best rides.
  • Heavy metal suicide: In the 1980s Ozzy Osbourne and the bands Metallica and Judas Priest were brought to court by parents who accused the musicians of hiding subliminal pro-suicide messages in their music.
  • Foreign debts: Persistent U.S. trade deficits
  • Homeless vets: Veterans of the Vietnam War, including many disabled ex-military, are reported to be left homeless and impoverished, the country unable to yet handle its failure to succeed.
  • AIDS: A collection of symptoms and infections in humans resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is first detected and recognized in the 1980s, and was on its way to becoming a pandemic.
  • Crack was a popular drug in the mid-to-late 1980s.

[]1984

  • Bernie Goetz: On December 22, Goetz shot four young men who he said were threatening him on a New York City subway. Goetz was charged with attempted murder but was acquitted of the charges, though convicted of carrying an unlicensed gun.

[]1988

  • Hypodermics on the shore: Medical waste was found washed up on beaches in New Jersey after being illegally dumped at sea. Before this event, waste dumped in the oceans was an "out of sight, out of mind" affair. This has been cited as one of the crucial turning points in popular opinion on environmentalism

[]1989

Of the 56 individuals mentioned by name in the song, the following nine are still alive as of July 18, 2011: Doris DayQueen Elizabeth IIBrigitte BardotFidel CastroChubby CheckerBob DylanJohn GlennSally Ride, and Bernhard Goetz.
Johnnie RayJoe DiMaggioRichard NixonRoy CampanellaMickey MantleFloyd PattersonMarlon BrandoMenachem BeginRonald Reagan and J. D. Salinger were all alive when the song was released but have died since.
Two individuals, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, are mentioned by name twice in the song.
The only U.S. Presidents in office from 1949 to 1989 not mentioned in the song are Lyndon JohnsonGerald FordJimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush.
The Dodgers are mentioned twice, but only in reference to their homes rather than by name: "Brooklyn's got a winning team", concerning their 1955 World Series victory, and "California baseball" about the Dodgers' and Giants' move from New York to California in 1958.

[]


1949

[]1950

[]1951

[]1952

[]1953

  • Joseph Stalin dies on March 5, yielding his position as leader of the Soviet Union.
  • Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Stalin for six months following his death. Malenkov had presided over Stalin's purges of party "enemies", but would be spared a similar fate by Nikita Khrushchev mentioned later in verse.
  • Gamal Abdel Nasser acts as the true power behind the new Egyptian nation as Muhammad Naguib's minister of the interior.
  • Sergei Prokofiev, the composer, dies on March 5, the same day as Stalin.
  • Winthrop Rockefeller and his wife Barbara are involved in a highly publicized divorce, culminating in 1954 with a record-breaking $5.5 million settlement.[9]
  • Roy Campanella, an African American baseball catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, receives the National League's Most Valuable Player award for the second time.
  • Communist bloc is a group of communist nations dominated by the Soviet Union at this time. Probably a reference to the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.

[]1954

[]1955

[]1956

[]1957

t

[]1959

  • Buddy Holly dies in a plane crash on February 3 with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper, in a day that had a devastating impact on the country and youth culture.
  • Ben-Hur, a film based around the New Testament starring Charlton Heston, wins eleven Academy Awards.
  • Space Monkey: Able and Miss Baker return to Earth from space aboard the flight Jupiter AM-18.
  • Mafia are the center of attention for the FBI and public attention builds to this organized crime society with a historically Sicilian-American origin.
  • Hula hoops reach 100 million in sales as the latest toy fad.
  • Fidel Castro comes to power after a revolution in Cuba and visits the United States later that year on an unofficial twelve-day tour.
  • Edsel is a no-go: Production of this car marque ends after only three years due to poor sales.

[]1960

[]1961

[]1962

[]1963

  • Pope Paul VI: Cardinal Giovanni Montini is elected to the papacy and takes the regnal name of Paul VI.
  • Malcolm X makes his infamous statement "The chickens have come home to roost" about the Kennedy assassination, thus causing the Nation of Islam to censore him.
  • British politician sex: The British Secretary of State for War has a relationship with a showgirl, and then lies when questioned about it before the House of Commons. When the truth came out, it led to his own resignation and undermined the credibility of the Prime Minister.
  • JFK, blown away! What else do I have to say?: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22 while riding in an open convertible through Dallas.

[]1965

  • Birth control: In the early 1960s, oral contraceptives, popularly known as "the pill", first go on the market and are extremely popular. Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 challenged a Connecticut law prohibiting contraceptives. In 1968, Pope Paul VI released a papal encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae which declared artificial birth control a sin.
  • Ho Chi Minh: A Vietnamese communist, who served as President of Vietnam from 1954–1969. March 2 Operation Rolling Thunder begins bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply line from North Vietnam to the Vietcong rebels in the south. On March 8, the first U.S. combat troops, 3,500 marines, land in South Vietnam.

[]1968

]1969

  • Moonshot, the first manned lunar landing, successfully lands on the moon.
  • Woodstock: Famous rock and roll festival of 1969 that came to be the epitome of the counterculture movement.

]1974

  • Watergate: Political scandal that began when the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC was broken into. After the break-in, word began to spread that President Richard Nixon (a Republican) may have known about the break-in, and tried to cover it up. The scandal would ultimately result in the resignation of President Nixon, and to date, this remains the only time that anyone has ever resigned the Presidency.
  • Punk rock: The Ramones form, with the Sex Pistols following in 1975, bringing in the punk era.

[]1977

(Note that these two items, while later chronologically than the two 1976 items, come immediately before them in the song.)

]1976

(Note that these two items, while earlier chronologically than the two 1977 items, come immediately after them in the song)

[

[]1983

  • Wheel of Fortune: A hit television game show which has been TV's highest-rated syndicated program since 1983.
  • Sally Ride: In 1983 she becomes the first American woman in space. Dr. Ride's quip from space "Better than an E-ticket", harkens back to the opening of Disneyland mentioned earlier, with the E-ticket purchase needed for the best rides.
  • Heavy metal suicide: In the 1980s Ozzy Osbourne and the bands Metallica and Judas Priest were brought to court by parents who accused the musicians of hiding subliminal pro-suicide messages in their music.
  • Foreign debts: Persistent U.S. trade deficits
  • Homeless vets: Veterans of the Vietnam War, including many disabled ex-military, are reported to be left homeless and impoverished, the country unable to yet handle its failure to succeed.
  • AIDS: A collection of symptoms and infections in humans resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is first detected and recognized in the 1980s, and was on its way to becoming a pandemic.
  • Crack was a popular drug in the mid-to-late 1980s.

[]1984

  • Bernie Goetz: On December 22, Goetz shot four young men who he said were threatening him on a New York City subway. Goetz was charged with attempted murder but was acquitted of the charges, though convicted of carrying an unlicensed gun.

[]1988

  • Hypodermics on the shore: Medical waste was found washed up on beaches in New Jersey after being illegally dumped at sea. Before this event, waste dumped in the oceans was an "out of sight, out of mind" affair. This has been cited as one of the crucial turning points in popular opinion on environmentalism

[]1989

Of the 56 individuals mentioned by name in the song, the following nine are still alive as of July 18, 2011: Doris DayQueen Elizabeth IIBrigitte BardotFidel CastroChubby CheckerBob DylanJohn GlennSally Ride, and Bernhard Goetz.
Johnnie RayJoe DiMaggioRichard NixonRoy CampanellaMickey MantleFloyd PattersonMarlon BrandoMenachem BeginRonald Reagan and J. D. Salinger were all alive when the song was released but have died since.
Two individuals, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, are mentioned by name twice in the song.
The only U.S. Presidents in office from 1949 to 1989 not mentioned in the song are Lyndon JohnsonGerald FordJimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush.
The Dodgers are mentioned twice, but only in reference to their homes rather than by name: "Brooklyn's got a winning team", concerning their 1955 World Series victory, and "California baseball" about the Dodgers' and Giants' move from New York to California in 1958.

[]

1949

[]1950

[t]1951

[]1952

]1953

  • Joseph Stalin dies on March 5, yielding his position as leader of the Soviet Union.
  • Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Stalin for six months following his death. Malenkov had presided over Stalin's purges of party "enemies", but would be spared a similar fate by Nikita Khrushchev mentioned later in verse.
  • Gamal Abdel Nasser acts as the true power behind the new Egyptian nation as Muhammad Naguib's minister of the interior.
  • Sergei Prokofiev, the composer, dies on March 5, the same day as Stalin.
  • Winthrop Rockefeller and his wife Barbara are involved in a highly publicized divorce, culminating in 1954 with a record-breaking $5.5 million settlement.[9]
  • Roy Campanella, an African American baseball catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, receives the National League's Most Valuable Player award for the second time.
  • Communist bloc is a group of communist nations dominated by the Soviet Union at this time. Probably a reference to the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.

[]1954

[t]1955

[]1956

[]1957

[]1958

[]1959

  • Buddy Holly dies in a plane crash on February 3 with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper, in a day that had a devastating impact on the country and youth culture.
  • Ben-Hur, a film based around the New Testament starring Charlton Heston, wins eleven Academy Awards.
  • Space Monkey: Able and Miss Baker return to Earth from space aboard the flight Jupiter AM-18.
  • Mafia are the center of attention for the FBI and public attention builds to this organized crime society with a historically Sicilian-American origin.
  • Hula hoops reach 100 million in sales as the latest toy fad.
  • Fidel Castro comes to power after a revolution in Cuba and visits the United States later that year on an unofficial twelve-day tour.
  • Edsel is a no-go: Production of this car marque ends after only three years due to poor sales.

[]1960

[]1961

[]1962

[]1963

  • Pope Paul VI: Cardinal Giovanni Montini is elected to the papacy and takes the regnal name of Paul VI.
  • Malcolm X makes his infamous statement "The chickens have come home to roost" about the Kennedy assassination, thus causing the Nation of Islam to censore him.
  • British politician sex: The British Secretary of State for War has a relationship with a showgirl, and then lies when questioned about it before the House of Commons. When the truth came out, it led to his own resignation and undermined the credibility of the Prime Minister.
  • JFK, blown away! What else do I have to say?: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22 while riding in an open convertible through Dallas.

[]1965

  • Birth control: In the early 1960s, oral contraceptives, popularly known as "the pill", first go on the market and are extremely popular. Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 challenged a Connecticut law prohibiting contraceptives. In 1968, Pope Paul VI released a papal encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae which declared artificial birth control a sin.
  • Ho Chi Minh: A Vietnamese communist, who served as President of Vietnam from 1954–1969. March 2 Operation Rolling Thunder begins bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply line from North Vietnam to the Vietcong rebels in the south. On March 8, the first U.S. combat troops, 3,500 marines, land in South Vietnam.

[]1968

]1969

  • Moonshot, the first manned lunar landing, successfully lands on the moon.
  • Woodstock: Famous rock and roll festival of 1969 that came to be the epitome of the counterculture movement.

[]1974

  • Watergate: Political scandal that began when the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC was broken into. After the break-in, word began to spread that President Richard Nixon (a Republican) may have known about the break-in, and tried to cover it up. The scandal would ultimately result in the resignation of President Nixon, and to date, this remains the only time that anyone has ever resigned the Presidency.
  • Punk rock: The Ramones form, with the Sex Pistols following in 1975, bringing in the punk era.

[]1977

(Note that these two items, while later chronologically than the two 1976 items, come immediately before them in the song.)

[]1976

(Note that these two items, while earlier chronologically than the two 1977 items, come immediately after them in the song)

[]1979

[]1983

  • Wheel of Fortune: A hit television game show which has been TV's highest-rated syndicated program since 1983.
  • Sally Ride: In 1983 she becomes the first American woman in space. Dr. Ride's quip from space "Better than an E-ticket", harkens back to the opening of Disneyland mentioned earlier, with the E-ticket purchase needed for the best rides.
  • Heavy metal suicide: In the 1980s Ozzy Osbourne and the bands Metallica and Judas Priest were brought to court by parents who accused the musicians of hiding subliminal pro-suicide messages in their music.
  • Foreign debts: Persistent U.S. trade deficits
  • Homeless vets: Veterans of the Vietnam War, including many disabled ex-military, are reported to be left homeless and impoverished, the country unable to yet handle its failure to succeed.
  • AIDS: A collection of symptoms and infections in humans resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is first detected and recognized in the 1980s, and was on its way to becoming a pandemic.
  • Crack was a popular drug in the mid-to-late 1980s.

[]1984

  • Bernie Goetz: On December 22, Goetz shot four young men who he said were threatening him on a New York City subway. Goetz was charged with attempted murder but was acquitted of the charges, though convicted of carrying an unlicensed gun.

[]1988

  • Hypodermics on the shore: Medical waste was found washed up on beaches in New Jersey after being illegally dumped at sea. Before this event, waste dumped in the oceans was an "out of sight, out of mind" affair. This has been cited as one of the crucial turning points in popular opinion on environmentalism

[]1989

Of the 56 individuals mentioned by name in the song, the following nine are still alive as of July 18, 2011: Doris DayQueen Elizabeth IIBrigitte BardotFidel CastroChubby CheckerBob DylanJohn GlennSally Ride, and Bernhard Goetz.
Johnnie RayJoe DiMaggioRichard NixonRoy CampanellaMickey MantleFloyd PattersonMarlon BrandoMenachem BeginRonald Reagan and J. D. Salinger were all alive when the song was released but have died since.
Two individuals, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, are mentioned by name twice in the song.
The only U.S. Presidents in office from 1949 to 1989 not mentioned in the song are Lyndon JohnsonGerald FordJimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush.
The Dodgers are mentioned twice, but only in reference to their homes rather than by name: "Brooklyn's got a winning team", concerning their 1955 World Series victory, and "California baseball" about the Dodgers' and Giants' move from New York to California in 1958.

[]