This is the tenth post in my blog series about the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. I am writing about the significance of each item mentioned in the song. That is, what significance I THINK they have. I am not doing any research or looking anything up, so I could be totally wrong.
More information about this blog series can be found in the series' first post.
Lebanon - Lebanon is the capital of Beirut. It is mentioned in the song because it was a center for the Palestinian movement against Israel, which had regained its status as a sovereign country following World War II.
Charlse de Gaulle - He was the president of France. He oversaw the rebuilding of France following its near destruction by Nazi forces in World War II. The airport in Paris is now named after him.
California baseball - This phrase in the song quite simply refers to the Brooklyn Dodgers moving to Los Angeles.
Starkweather - Long before fears of global warming became predominant, many scientists believed the earth was heading into another ice age cycle. These scientists believed that such an ice age could come on quite abruptly, thus they called the phenomenon, "starkweather."
homicide - During the early 1960s the violent crime rate in the United States began to edge up on a yearly basis. The homicide rate in particular began to climb. A trend that continued into the early 1980s before finally beginning to reverse.
children of thalidomide - Thalidomide was a chemical used in the 1950s in the manufacturing process of plastics. Many factories dumped the chemical into fresh water rivers. The chemical eventually ended up the municipal drinking supplies. Pregnant women who drank the contaminated water delivered babies with incredibly high incidence rates of birth defects.
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