"We Didn't Start the Fire" is a 1989 hit single by American musician Billy Joel in which the lyrics tell the history of the United States from 1949 to 1989 through a series of cultural references. In total, the song contains 118 or 119 references to historical people, places, events, and phenomena. The idea for creating a song chronicling news events and personalities originally came to Joel from a conversation he had with a friend of Sean Lennon, wherein he claimed that nothing of note happened in the news during the early life of Joel. In his effort to prove the friend wrong, Joel began listing various important global events such as the Korean War, the Little Rock Crisis, and the Hungarian Revolution. The references are presented in roughly chronological order, beginning with Joel's birth in 1949 and culminating in 1989, when Joel had turned 40 years old. The song proved divisive, with some praising its educational value and others criticizing the melody.
Lists cataloging every reference in the song have previously been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Far Out, and Ranker.