The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

The 1950s: 

 

 

1950
Joe McCarthy, aided and abetted by Richard Nixon and Roy Cohn, begins the Communist witch hunts of America.
"The Fletcher Memorial Home" - Pink Floyd
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1950
The Studebaker company goes bust.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1950-1953
The Korean War.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1951
Dacron(tm) is introduced as a fibre, beginning an age of polyester.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1951-1962
Johnny Ray, the Nabob of Sob, upsets many people with his singing
"Come On Eileen" - Dexy's Midnight Runners
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1951
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of treason against the United States and executed.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1951
The first H-Bomb is tested.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1951-1960
Sugar Ray is World Middleweight Boxing Champion.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1951
Peace talks begin in the South Korean city of Panmunjom.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1951 - 1958
The career of Mickey Mantle, "The Commerce Comet".
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1951
Hammerstein's "The King and I" and J.D.Salinger's "Catcher In The Rye" are released.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1952
Walter Winchell abruptly returns to the screen.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1952
Jonas Salk perfects the polio vaccine.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1952
Elizabeth Windsor is crowned Elizabeth II, Queen of England.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1952-1956
Rocky Marciano is World Heavyweight Boxing Champion.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1952
Santayana dies, and history is repeated by those who ignore him
- and it.
Just like he predicted.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1953
Eisenhower becomes President.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1953
Stalin dies, and Malenkov succeeds him as Prime Minister of the USSR.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1953
Gamal Nasser becomes President of Egypt.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1953
Edmund Hillary gets really, really high.
"(He'll Never Be An) Old Man River" - This Is Serious Mum

1953
The animated feature "Peter Pan" is released.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1953
Bill Haley Rocks around the clock.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1953
Russian Composer Prokofiev dies, unmourned by Monty Python.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1954
Davy Crockett's life forms the basis of a movie serial, inspiring Crockett-mania in the USA.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1954
Marlon Brando wins his first Oscar for "On The Waterfront"
"Dear Marlon Brando" - Pretty and Twisted
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1954
Famed Condustor Arturo Toscaninni retires.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1954
Dien Bien Phu falls.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1955
Albert Einstein and James Dean both die.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1955
Disneyland opens.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1955
Joe DiMaggio is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, as the Brooklyn Dodgers win their only pennant.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1955
A military coup topples Juan Peron from the Presdiency of Argentina.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1955
Vladimir Nabokov earns a reputation as a dirty old man - among those who don't recognise satire, at least.
"Don't Stand So Close To Me" - The Police
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1956
Elvis Presley's first album is released.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1956
Brigitte Bardot stars in "And god Created Woman".
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1956
A Pro-Western uprising in Budapest is crushed by the Soviet Army.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1956
Civil Rights protests begin in Alabama.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1956
Nikita Kruschev orders the construction of the Berlin Wall.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1956
Bela Lugosi fatally fails to redeem Ed Wood's creative genius.
"Bela Lugosi's Dead" - Bauhaus

1956
Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1956
"Peyton Place" is first broadcast.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1956
Egypt is invaded by Israel after it claims the Suez Canal.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1957
Racial integration is enforced at gunpoint in Little Rock, Arkansas.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1957
Jack Kerouac writes "On The Road".
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1957 - 1968
Martin Luther King fights for truth, justice and the American Way
"MLK" - U2
"Pride" - U2

1957
Sputnik is launched, putting the USSR ahead in the Space Race
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1957
Ford releases the Edsel, which is a dramatic and costly flop.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1957
Chou En Lai and John Foster Dulles butt heads.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1957
"Bridge On The River Kwai" sweeps the Academy Awards
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1958
Pasternak is compelled to refuse the Nobel Prize for Literature by his government.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1958
The Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants relocate to California.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1958
Eisenhower sends US Marines to Lebanon to help quell rioting.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1958
Charles Starkweather kills eleven people in a cross-country spree.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1958
Birth of the Thalidomide Babies.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1959
Nikita Kruschev visits America, although whether as Soviet Premier or stand-up comedian remains unclear
"Russians" - Sting

1959
Charles de Gaulle becomes President of the Fifth Republic in France.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1959
Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper die of deceleration trauma
"Air Crash Museum" - The Dead Milkmen
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel
"American Pie" - Don McLean

1959
"Ben Hur" sweeps the Academy Awards
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1959
First monkey in space - Tyler Durden would've been proud.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1959
Don Vito Genovese jailed for narcotic-related offences.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1959
The Hula Hoop is invented, and becomes the Pokemon of its time.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1959
Fidel Casto either conquers or liberates Cuba.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

 

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Copyright Loki Carbis, 200
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Last tinkered with:
December 3, 2002