All 81 References in Fall Out Boy’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” Explained
In his 1989 hit “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” American songwriter Billy Joel rattles off a list of historical references in order to argue that his generation…well, like the title says, “didn’t start the fire” of global tragedy, scandal, and screwups. (Britannica explains all 119 events here.) In 2023 pop-punk band Fall Out Boy released their own version of the song, covering events from 1989 to 2023.
We did the research, again. Here are the stories behind all 81 historical references Fall Out Boy deemed worthy of attention in 2023.
Captain Planet
The titular superhero of television series Captain Planet and the Planeteers (1990–96) helped a group of cartoon teenagers in their battle against ecological catastrophe. Captain Planet taught these teens—and the show’s viewers—about the importance of environmental conservation.
Arab Spring
In the early 2010s, a wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings erupted throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Known as the Arab Spring, this series of revolts targeted authoritarian regimes and their leaders. Protesters found rapid success during Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution and Egypt’s January 25 Revolution. Bloody struggles between ruling regimes and opposition groups subsequently arose in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria.
L.A. Riots
In April 1992 four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted on all but one charge connected with the severe beating of Rodney King, an African American motorist. The charges included assault with a deadly weapon. The officers, three of whom were white, were acquitted by a mostly white jury despite a widely circulated video capturing the brutal attack. Following the announcement of the acquittal, protesters took to the streets all over Los Angeles. More than 50 people were killed, more than 2,300 were injured, and thousands were arrested. With $1 billion in property damage, the L.A. Riots became one of the most destructive civil disruptions in American history.
Rodney King
See above.
Deepfakes
Along with the rise of artificial intelligence in the 21st century came deepfakes: images, videos, and audio samples of fake events created by advanced computers. Deepfake technology can imitate a person’s voice, likeness, and mannerisms in order to make it appear as if that person said outlandish remarks or engaged in inappropriate activities. Deepfake videos began popping up about 2017, the vast majority of which were pornographic. Reactions toward the new technology included worries of defamation, particularly with regard to altered videos of politicians, and concern that pornographic deepfakes can be created without the featured individuals’ consent.
Earthquakes
Several deadly earthquakes occurred since the Billy Joel released “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in 1989. These include a magnitude-9.1 quake in the Indian Ocean in 2004, which triggered a tsunami; a magnitude-7.0 quake in Haiti in 2010; and a magnitude-9.0 quake that triggered a tsunami in Japan in 2011 and caused a major nuclear accident (see number 17 on this list). Altogether, these earthquakes claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
Iceland volcano
In March 2010 the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupted for the first time since the 19th century. The eruptions melted glacial ice at the center of the volcano, sending steam and ash into the atmosphere. Prevailing winds carried the ash cloud southeast to northern Europe, prompting many European countries to temporarily ground flights and shut down their national airspace.
Oklahoma City bomb
On April 19, 1995, former U.S. Army soldier Timothy McVeigh ignited a homemade bomb, which he concealed in a rental truck, in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The terrorist attack killed 168 people and injured several hundred more. Until the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Kurt Cobain
Kurt Cobain was the lead singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter for the band Nirvana. He was an unofficial spokesman for teen angst, bringing alternative rock into the mainstream. Cobain was a frequent user of heroin and battled depression. In 1994 he died by suicide at age 27.
Pokémon
In the 1990s Japanese game designer Satoshi Tajiri first created the concept for Pocket Monsters, now known as Pokémon. In 1996 Nintendo released the first Pokémon video games, Pokémon Green and Pokémon Red. Pokémon soon became a cultural phenomenon, with the creatures appearing in more video games, trading cards, several television series, and a movie franchise. In 2016 the mobile game Pokémon Go was released, reviving the monsters’ popularity.
Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods was the golfer to beat throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, following one of the most impressive amateur careers in golf history with a prestigious run in the professional circuit. Despite media scrutiny surrounding his personal life, he is considered one of the greatest professional golfers in history, having tied the record for the most PGA Tour wins with 82.
Myspace
Created by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe in 2003, Myspace was one of the first social network sites. The platform peaked in popularity between 2005 and 2008, with tens of millions of users. After the introduction of Facebook, however, Myspace’s popularity rapidly declined.
Monsanto, GMOs
Monsanto was a dominant company in American agriculture, perhaps best known for its controversial use of genetically modified organism (GMO) technology to produce crops. In the late 20th century Monsanto genetically engineered seeds to resist the herbicide glyphosate, which resulted in crops being sprayed with more herbicides to kill weeds without harming the crops. The technology sparked an ongoing debate regarding safety issues associated with GMOs and the wider use of biotechnology in agriculture.
Harry Potter
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, a seven-book narrative following the titular wizard boy and his battle against the evil Voldemort, captivated audiences in the late 1990s and 2000s. The series was adapted into a blockbuster eight-film franchise starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint; in 2010, Universal Studios opened a Harry Potter-themed section in their Florida amusement park. Since then, J.K. Rowling has faced criticism for insensitive comments about the transgender community.
Twilight
Stephenie Meyer’s vampire-themed Twilight Saga, the first book of which was published in 2005, entertained fans with love triangles, forbidden romance, and rivalry between vampires and werewolves. Plus, the Twilight books and corresponding film series sparked a major debate among fans: Team Edward or Team Jacob?
Michael Jackson dies
On June 25, 2009, “King of Pop” Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California, at age 50. His death was caused by a lethal mix of sedatives and propofol, an anesthetic. Jackson’s death was later ruled a homicide, and in 2011 Conrad Murray, Jackson’s personal doctor, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
Nuclear accident, Fukushima, Japan
In 2011 a magnitude-9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan triggered a tsunami whose waves flooded and damaged the backup generators at the Fukushima Daiichi (“Number One”) nuclear power plant in northern Japan. Three reactors partially melted, releasing radioactive material into the surrounding area. Over 100,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes, and over 2,000 lives were lost due to the disaster.
Crimean Peninsula
In February 2014 Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin, invaded and illegally annexed Crimea, an autonomous republic of Ukraine on the Black Sea. Putin characterized his actions as an effort to support the Russian ethnic majority and military assets in the region. Russia’s invasion followed the ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, whose pro-Russia policy resulted in protests in Kyiv and the toppling of his government. In March 2014 the United Nations General Assembly condemned the annexation. The conflict in Crimea was a prelude to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the subsequent war between the two countries, during which the Russian military continued to occupy the peninsula.
Cambridge Analytica
In 2018 Cambridge Analytica, a British data analytics and political consulting firm, was at the forefront of a national debate in the U.S. about Internet data privacy and user consent. The company was under investigation for harvesting data from some 87 million Facebook users without their consent. It used this data to create detailed profiles of American voters, designed to be sold to political campaigns. Cambridge Analytica had ties to the campaigns of several Republican politicians in the United States, including Senator Ted Cruz and President Donald Trump. Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, also received criticism for mishandling user data.
Kim Jong-Un
In 2011 Kim Jong-Un succeeded his father, Kim Jong Il, as the supreme leader of North Korea. While many details about Kim Jong-Un and his regime remain unknown outside North Korea, he is often characterized as a repressive dictator who directed the rapid development of North Korean nuclear weapons. He engaged in several wars of words with U.S. President Donald Trump, until the two leaders met face-to-face in 2018 and pledged to de-escalate growing nuclear tension between the two nations.
Robert Downey, Jr., Iron Man
Robert Downey, Jr., is an American actor known for his portrayal of Tony Stark and his superhero alter ego Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a series of blockbuster films including Iron Man and The Avengers. By 2020 the franchise’s cumulative global box office receipts had topped $22 billion.
More war in Afghanistan
The Afghanistan War, an international conflict triggered by the September 11 attacks, was waged between the United States and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. In 2021, after the execution of U.S. President Joe Biden’s order to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban regained full control of the country for the first time since the late 1990s.
Cubs go all the way again
In 2016 the American baseball team the Chicago Cubs won the World Series for this first time since 1908.
Obama
Barack Obama was the first African American to be elected president of the United States, serving in the office from 2009 to 2017. In 2009 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
Spielberg
Steven Spielberg is an American film director, producer, and three-time Academy Award winner. His filmography includes Jaws (1975), The Color Purple (1985), and Jurassic Park (1993), among others.
Explosion, Lebanon
An explosion on August 4, 2020, devastated the streets of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut. When a warehouse caught fire, a large amount of stored ammonium nitrate combusted, resulting in a mushroom cloud explosion that killed more than 200 people and injured about 7,000. The chemical reaction came at the fault of improper safety measures and neglect. Following the disaster, almost half a million people were left homeless.
Unabomber
“Unabomber” is a name given to Ted Kaczynski, an American mathematician, political extremist, and domestic terrorist. Between 1978 and 1995 he detonated 16 bombs in the United States, attacking universities and airlines. By the time of his arrest, 3 people had been killed and 23 injured. Kaczynski was sentenced to life in prison with no parole, where he died reportedly by suicide on June 10, 2023.
Bobbit, John
In 1993 Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband’s penis. John Bobbit, a former U.S. Marine, then underwent a nine-hour surgery to have his penis successfully reattached. The incident was widely covered in national media, and “Bobbitt” became a household name. Charged with assault, Lorena accused her husband of physical and sexual abuse, charges he later faced in court. The couple officially divorced in 1995.
Bombing Boston Marathon
The Boston Marathon bombing was a terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Placed and detonated in the crowd, homemade bombs injured more than 260 people and caused 3 deaths. The perpetrators, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, avoided capture for a few days after the bombing. On April 19 Tamerlan died after a shootout with police, and Dzhokhar was later apprehended, convicted of terrorism associated with Islamic radicalization, among other counts, and sentenced to death.
Balloon Boy
In 2009 Richard and Mayumi Heene reported their six-year-old son, Falcon, to be trapped inside a released homemade helium balloon. Shaped like a flying saucer, the balloon was in the air for a total of 90 minutes. Having not found the boy northeast of Denver, where the balloon landed, rescuers began the search for his body. But Falcon was later discovered to be hiding in the attic of the Heenes’ home, having never been in the balloon at all. The situation received incredibly vast global publicity, with Falcon nicknamed “Balloon Boy.”
War on terror
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States launched a global counterterrorism effort. The term war on terror was first officially used by the U.S. government on September 20. The effort came to include major wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the monitoring of political ideologies in the Middle East, the capture and interrogation of suspected terrorists, and other international operations.
QAnon
QAnon is an American conservative conspiracy theory that originated online in October 2017 and gained traction among supporters of then U.S. president Donald Trump. Believers tend to antagonize the Democratic Party, Hollywood, and what they consider the “deep state” within the U.S. government, members of which groups they consider to be satanic and cannibalistic sexual predators. The group’s anonymous leader, Q, was determined by linguists to most likely be the creation of South African software engineer Paul Furber and 8chan/8kun administrator Ron Watkins.
Trump gets impeached twice
In the history of the United States, only three presidents have ever been impeached:Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 for having violated the Tenure of Office Act; Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998, charged with perjury and obstruction of justice after denying an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky; and Donald Trump, who is the first to have been impeached twice. In 2019 he was presented with the articles of impeachment in connection with his alleged attempt to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for political favors in exchange for military support. Two years later Trump was impeached again, regarding his role in the January 6 storming of the United States Capitol.
Polar bears got no ice
The melting of Arctic ice due to climate change threatens Arctic species, including polar bears, with displacement and habitat loss.
Fyre Fest
Fyre Festival was a 2017 music festival characterized by fraudulent marketing and disastrous mismanagement. Founded by con artist Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, it was marketed by celebrities and social media influencers as a luxury music festival experience on an island in The Bahamas. The eventual accommodations, infrastructure, and schedule lacked the originally promised grandeur. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of lawsuits followed in the ensuing years. McFarland pleaded guilty to fraud charges and in 2022 was released after serving four years of his original six-year sentence.
Black Parade
The Black Parade is the title of the third studio album of the American emo punk-rock band My Chemical Romance, released in 2006. The album follows a dying man through death and beyond. In 2021 Beyoncé earned the Grammy for best R&B performance for her single “Black Parade,” from her visual album Black Is King.
Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps is a former American Olympic swimmer. He won the most medals of any athlete in Olympic history, with 23 gold, 3 silver, and 2 bronze medals in his collection.
Y2K
Y2K is a term originally coined to address a computer-related concern that emerged as the 20th century was coming to a close, sometimes called the “Millennium Bug.” In the 20th century many computer systems and software abbreviated four-digit years as two digits. Concerns were raised that software would fail to distinguish between years like 1900 and 2000 upon the turn of the century, though the actual impact was minor. Later the term came to signify the pop culture trends and aesthetic of the early aughts.
Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson is a British politician who served as mayor of London from 2008 to 2016 and was elected Conservative Party leader and prime minister of the United Kingdom in 2019. He was involved in facilitating Brexit (see below). In 2022 information was made public that Johnson routinely violated public health regulations in association with the COVID-19 pandemic. Johnson denied the allegations in Parliament but was forced to resign in September 2022.
Brexit
In a referendum held on June 23, 2016, some 52 percent of participating voters opted for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union (EU). Brexit was the political process of the U.K.’s withdrawal. The term is a combination of the words British and exit. In the few years of active debate regarding how the exit would take place, Brexit was destabilized by a change of leadership, with Theresa May being replaced by Boris Johnson. Nevertheless, the decision was finalized, and Brexit came into action as of 23:00 GMT on January 31, 2020.
Kanye West
Kanye West is an American rapper and fashion designer known for his critically acclaimed albums such as The College Dropout (2004) and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)—and for his many public controversies, including anti-Semitic comments and support for U.S. President Donald Trump. At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, he leaped onstage during Taylor Swift’s acceptance of the award for best female video. He took over the microphone to publicly exclaim: “I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!” In 2016 at a fashion show for his brand YEEZY, he released his single “Famous,” reigniting the conflict by referring to Swift by a derogatory term.
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter whose discography—which includes Taylor Swift (2006), Fearless (2008), and 1989 (2014)—traces her transition from acoustic country music to the world of pop. Many of her songs reference her personal life, including the conflict with Kanye West at the 2009 Video Music Awards (see above).
Stranger Things
Netflix’s 2016 release Stranger Things is a throwback to the 1980s in the form of a TV horror series. Over several seasons the show follows young friends investigating child abduction, government experiments, and supernatural monsters in small-town Indiana and beyond.
Tiger King
A popular documentary series on Netflix, Tiger King follows Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as “Joe Exotic,” and big-cat breeding in the United States. In 2019 Joe Exotic was convicted of animal abuse and the attempted murder for hire of fellow zookeeper and animal rights activist Carole Baskin.
Ever Given, Suez
The world’s supply chain, already under extreme stress because of the COVID-19 pandemic, all but collapsed when the Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships, beached diagonally in the Suez Canal. As a result of high winds, poor visibility, and speeding, the Ever Given lost control in a single-lane passage, blocking the Suez Canal for six days in March 2021. An essential waterway, the Suez Canal receives about 15 percent of the world’s shipping traffic and is the shortest route between Europe and Asia.