We Didn't Start the Fire~3 min of history

[mickeyd]

We Didn't Start The Fire

50 years of images in 3 minutes

Someone went to a lot of trouble to put this video together. I found it very interesting and worth my time.


Turn up volume, sit back and enjoy a review of 50 years of history in less than 3 minutes! Thanks to Billy Joel and someone from the University of Chicago with too much time on Google!

Just click on the link below.



When the song starts it helps to click on "Lyrics"in the lower right.

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~yeli23/Flash/Fire.html

 

[pfpelican]

WOW! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Achiever51]

When the Billy Joel song first came out, my daughter's high school American History teacher used it to teach the class about these key events of the 50s-70s. When I talked to the teacher about it, he said every single kid in the class was able to recite every event -- and as they had to research every one of them as part of the class -- they knew more about them than if they just read about them in a book.

Billy Joel, where were you when I was struggling with World History in high school?? I could have used a memory aid like this one!!

 

[Nords]

Billy Joel, where were you when I was struggling with World History in high school?? I could have used a memory aid like this one!!

I've been reading a lot of history in ER, and every time I finish a book I wonder what the heck I was thinking about in high school.

Then I spend some time with our teenager and realize why it was so hard to learn that stuff, let alone remember it.

 

[califdreamer]

I've been reading a lot of history in ER, and every time I finish a book I wonder what the heck I was thinking about in high school.

Then I spend some time with our teenager and realize why it was so hard to learn that stuff, let alone remember it.

Yeah I remember what I was thinking about when I was a teenager. Can we get that slide of Brigitte Bardot cued up again please?

 

[clifp]

I loved history even as a kid. I am quite sure that the driving force behind me being interested in history was playing wargames in Jr. High and High School Why did the Germans have such a great army in WWII, and why did the north win the war, were two questions that I was thinking about as teenager. (Of course not as frequently as How can I possibly get laid? answer stop being a nerd playing wargames with your friends)

Some memorization is certainly needed, but I think what is really important is to understand what happened, and why, and have a general idea when. Its not critical that kids know the civil was fought in 1861-1865, but that was it fought in the middle of the 19th century and WWI was at the beginning of the 20th century is important.

The tools are so much better and fun for teaching history now than the were in my days, Computer gamess, Billy Joel songs, Google, interactive maps, Wikipedia are all superior to reading text books. I find it really sad that kids still graduate with such an appalling lack of historical knowlege.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Not to mention there are a lot of different opinions of history.

One of the most fascinating perspectives is reading other country's view of various historic events. Often quite different from ours.

 

[Achiever51]

Not to mention there are a lot of different opinions of history.

One of the most fascinating perspectives is reading other country's view of various historic events. Often quite different from ours.

I agree! I enjoy reading newspapers from around the world - especially their analysis of U.S. events. It's interesting to read how others interpret our news.

 

[pfpelican]

more images, less text: We Didn't Start the Fire

 

[tangomonster]

Okay....the images were interesting, but I don't get the song. "We didn't start the fire. We didn't light it. We tried to fight it." I first thought it meant that people have been doing radical and amazing things, even before the sixties and seventies. But then it showed people and things that would not be considered radical/progressive/amazing.
Can someone explain?

 

[mickeyd]

Can someone explain?

It's a rock and roll song.

 

[SteveR]

Billy Joel wrote the song as a historical framework of what happened during his lifetime starting in 1949.

Here is a good explanation of the song and the event depicted in it.
We Didn't Start the Fire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia