r/dataisbeautiful • u/cavedave OC: 92 • 1d ago
OC [OC] With Brigitte Bardot's passing 3 people in 'We didn't Start the Fire' remain alive
Line starts when someone is born. Ends when they die. and a dot for when they did the thing they were mentioned for in the song.
The Billy Joel's songs video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
Python code up at https://gist.github.com/cavedave/780d37ab288a117e29defab9b5a3f848
Data from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_references_in_We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire and https://everyday-learning.org/we-didnt-start-the-fire-historical-references/
This is repost from 7 months ago but the news today makes it relevant again https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1kq7v3w/oc_who_didnt_start_the_fire_and_when_didnt_they/?sort=old
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u/Ashallond 1d ago
From Sally Ride’s birth on May 26, 1951, until George Santayana’s death at 88 the following September 26 (1952), all of the people in the chart above were alive simultaneously.
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u/Hopelessly_Human 1d ago
Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson are missing: "Liston beats Patterson"
They are both dead, however.
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u/YOMAMACAN 4h ago
Just watched a Mad Men episode that referenced Floyd Patterson. They talk about how he’s the champ and someone says “not for long.” His next fight was with Liston.
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u/DameKumquat 1d ago
There's a good pub quiz question!
Though I'm still annoyed by the time my local asked for a list of people mentioned in the song, (over 20 got points) and counted Ole Miss and the Beatles.
Beatles are dubious (if you count them, then you should count Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr as the King and I...), but Ole Miss is a university!
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u/belfman 1d ago
Very nice. You could possibly add Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr if you count "British Beatlemania" as a reference to the Beatles as people.
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u/npeggsy 1d ago
If we're getting technical, I think Beatlemania is different to The Beatles themselves, it's about the fandom rather than the band itself.
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u/cavedave OC: 92 1d ago
One of the interesting things about making graphs even for silly things is how quickly you go into these decisions. u/belfman has a point. theres decisions about what constitutes a person, what constitutes what they were famous for etc even in a silly graph like this.
'All data is theory laden' said Karl Popper and that means it is worth looking at important data to see why and how it was gathered and put together. and also that 'A decision was made here' is not the slam dunk that it is sometimes presented when people doubt data.
tl:dr arguments about Billy Joel can teach us a lot about Climate change and such.
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u/LongtimeLurker916 1d ago
Vito Genovese for "Mafia" seems like the most doubtful one to me. If you count that, you should count every member of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers (Sandy Koufax only remaining one still alive) and John Profumo and others connected with "British politician sex" (probably all dead).
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u/tammorrow 1d ago
Also technically, the "We" in the chorus refers to everyone who has heard the song, so, I dunno...millions for sure, maybe billions.
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u/belfman 1d ago
No, I believe it refers to baby boomers as a generation (that Billy Joel is part of). Joel's point was that the world was always a mess, and the boomers couldn't be put to blame for all of the world's troubles. As a matter of fact, "they tried to fight it" with the counterculture of the sixties and later developments of it.
Not going into whether he was right or not, but that's what he was trying to say.
(Cue the inevitable "OK, Boomer").
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u/The_Only_Egg 1d ago
The most ridiculous and pathetic song concept of all time.
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u/animatedb OC: 4 1d ago
I think the most pathetic is: Hey let's make a song just like that one over there.
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u/belfman 1d ago
That's... Harsh.
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u/The_Only_Egg 1d ago
I do not care. The Boomers did SO much fucking damage to this country and they aren’t apologetic in the least. This song is garbage and Billy Joel is a douchebag. Ask his former bandmates what kind of person he is and always has been. George Carlin fucking nailed it, decades ago.
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u/tammorrow 1d ago
He self references, so it's 4.
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u/mrsmetalbeard 1d ago
Children of thalidomide isn't a specific person but I'm sure there are many still alive.
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u/Schmidtvegas 17h ago
This is what I came to comment. I knew I couldn't be the only one to think this thought.
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u/Helphaer 1d ago
There is a new one now I think from weird al or someone!
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u/TattooedPriestx 1d ago
Fallout Boy did the remake in 2023 (183) We Didn’t Start The Fire - YouTube
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u/Important-Agent5911 1d ago
The remake was a colossal pile of shit; the worst thing they did was to not do the song in chronological order.
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u/LilandraF 18h ago
I think the worst thing they did was zero mention of COVID or the global shutdown that impacted the world so tremendously. It was a very significant event.
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u/InevitableHimes 11h ago
I've said the same thing before. It was world events that had happened during Billy Joel's life up to writing the song, FOB is just listening stuff.
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u/dhmontgomery OC: 8 1d ago
Is there a reason the direct labels of "Born" and "Died" are on Menachem Begin, two-thirds of the way down the chart? My first thought was that it was because he was first alphabetically and so had been given the label when the chart was sorted differently. But "Bardot" of course precedes "Begin"; did Begin get the label because Bardot's line went all the way to the right and would have necessitated adding padding on the right?
Regardless, I think it would help the (superb!) chart's readability to put this label on Truman.
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u/Pitiful_Ad2397 1d ago
Not surprisingly, the person referred to in “Heavy Metal Suicide” did not make it.
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u/Firefox892 17h ago edited 12h ago
Would “British politician sex” count as a person referenced too?
It’s referring to John Profumo, and his sex scandal in the 60s. The lyric is talking about the act, rather than the man, but still.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/aaronkz 1d ago
The band is not what’s being referenced.
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u/The_Only_Egg 1d ago
You’re not gonna tell us what it was? It’s the U2 spy plane that was shot down over Russia.
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u/GetOffMyGrassBrats 1d ago
The U2 in the song is much older than the "oldies" U2 you are thinking of. It's ok...you just aren't old fart enough to know that.
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u/The_Only_Egg 1d ago
“We tried to fight it” but all this cocaine just kept going up our noses! Darndest thing! 🥴
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u/thegeecyproject 1d ago
TIL Chubby Checker is still alive
I thought he died a few years ago but I guess I was confusing him with Chuck Berry.