We didn’t start the fire

By Daniel Altemus

President, Harry Truman-1849

Doris Day

Red China

Johnnie Ray

South Pacific

Walter Winchell

Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy

• 1950

Richard Nixon

Studebaker

Television

North Korea

South Korea

Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs

• 1951

H-Bomb

Sugar Ray

Panmunjom

Barndo

“the king and I”

“the catcher in the rye”

Eisenhower

• 1952

Vaccine

England’s got a new queen

Marciano

Liberace

Santayana goodbye

Josef Stalin

• 1952

Malenkov

Nasser

Prokofiev

Rockefeller

Campanella

Communist Bloc

Roy Cohn

• 1954

Juan Peron

Toscanini

Dacron

Dien Bien Phu

“Rock Around the Clock”

Einstein

• 1955

James Dean

Brooklyn’s got a winning team

Davy Crockett

“Peter Pan”

Elvis Presley

Disneyland

Bardot

• 1956

Budapest

Alabama

Khrushchev

Princess Grace

“Peyton Place”

Trouble in the Suez

Little Rock

• 1957

Pasternak

Mickey Mantle

Kerouac

Sputnik

Chou En-Lai

“Bridge on the River Kwai”

Lebanon

• 1958

Charles de Gualle

California baseball

Starkweather homicide

Children of thalidomide

Buddy Holly

• 1959

“Ben-Hur”

Space monkey

Mafia

Hula hoops

Castro

Edsel is a no go

U2

• 1960

Syngman Rhee

Payola

Kennedy

Chubby Checker

“Psycho”

Belgians in the Congo

Hemingway

• 1961

Eichmann

“Stranger in a Strange Land”

Dylan

Berlin

Bay of Pigs Invasion

“Lawrence of Arabia”

• 1962

British Beatlemania

Ole Miss

John Glenn

Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul

• 1963

Malcolm X

British politician sex

JFK, blown away

Birth control

• 1964-1989

Ho Chi Minh

Richard Nixon

Moonshot

Woodstock

Watergate

Punk rock

Begin

Reagan

Palestine

Terror on the airline

Ayatollolah’s in Iran

Russians in Afghanistans

“Wheel of Fortune”

Sally Ride

Heavy metal suicide

Foreign debts

Homeless vets

AIDS

Crack

Bernie Goetz

Hypodermics on the shore

Chinas under martial law

Rock and roller Cola Wars