Speaker 1: Hey, this is Van Allen Plexico of the White Rocket
Entertainment Network and you're listening to the Surely You Can't
Be Serious Podcast.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely you Can't
Be Serious Podcast Special Edition five Minutes of Fire. We
are here talking about the lyrics of We Didn't Start
the Fire by Billy Joel. We're covering only five minutes
at a time, which is about to link for the song,
so it works out kind of nicely. So please join
us as we dive into some new lyrics today.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, so here are the topics that we're
going to be covering today.
Speaker 2: Princess Grace Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suess.
Speaker 1: Okaye, tell me about Princess Grace.
Speaker 2: Okay, Princess Grace is Grace Kelly. She was an actress.
She had been in multiple movies and then she teamed
up with Alfred Hitchcock and was in dial m for
Murder in nineteen fifty four, Rear Window in nineteen fifty
four as well, and To Catch a Thief in nineteen
fifty five. Then, on a kind of detour from going
to the cann Film Festival, she was supposed to go
do a modeling gig with the Prince of Monaco named
Prince Rainier, and short time later they were getting engaged.
Interesting at twenty six years of age, she retired from acting,
unbeknownst to herself because she thought she was going to
keep going, and married Prince Rainier in one of the
biggest ceremonies in the history of royal weddings. Now, the
side story on this is Monaco was in this agreement
with France that it would remain independent so long as
there was a monarchy in place, which meant Prince Rainier
had to have heirs. Grace Kelly actually went through a
physical exam to make sure that she could have kids
before they actually got married, and then once they got married,
she did. We had Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stephanie,
and ultimately, in nineteen eighty two, she was driving in
a car with Princess Stephanie, she suffered a mild cerebral
hemorrhage which caused her to lose control of the car,
which resulted in more injuries to her, which ultimately led
to her death in nineteen eighty two. All right, tell
me about Peyton Place. Okay.
Speaker 1: Peyton Place is a novel written in nineteen fifty six
by Grace Talias hoping I'm saying that right. It's set
in a fictional New England town called Peyton Place. It
is a notoriously lascivious book containing themes of incest, sex, lust, murder,
abortion and adultery, all set in this small conservative town.
It sold sixty thousand copies in the first ten days
and was a New York Times bestseller for fifty nine weeks.
It's been adapted into movies, TV shows, and soap operas.
The author Grace Mettelius. She died from cirrhosis of the
liver at age thirty nine. Sandra Bullock was actually slated
to portray her in a biopic, but unfortunately it was
never made. Very impactful book for the nineteen sixties. Okay,
do tell me about trouble in the Suez.
Speaker 2: All right? So this refers to the Suez Canal crisis.
Now I mentioned Naser, second president of Egypt, in one
of our prior episodes. This is when the match HiT's
the gasoline, if you will. So the Suez Canal was
owned by a company called the Suez Canal Company, which
that company was mostly owned by the UK and France.
During the Cold War, Naser would not pledge allegiance to
either the US or the Soviet Union, which really made
the US mad. And so they said, you know what,
we're not going to give you the money that we
promised to give you since you won't align with anybody.
In the UK said, yeah, we're not going to give
you any money either, and so NASA was like, okay, well,
then we're going to nationalize the Suez Canal, which means
the egypt government is going to take over control of it.
So UK and France are now like, ah, what what No,
and they're freaking out. And so the UK, France and
Israel all team up. They huddle up. They're like, okay,
here's what's going to happen. Israel. You go invade Egypt
and take over the Suez Canal and then we'll come
in as peacemakers and we'll say, okay, well we're going
to stay here and make sure that the Suez Canal
isn't causing any trouble anymore. So Israel's like, okay, that's fine,
I mean, really what we're more interested in the Straits
of Tehran because Egypt's been blocking them from eight years,
but now that they've nationalized the Suez Canal, we've got
nowhere to go, so yes, we will invade. So on
October twenty ninth, nineteen fifty six, Israel attacks and they
are storming the place. I mean, they're taking out everybody.
And then their very next day, the UK and France
they issue this statement that they're like, hey, you naughty,
naughty boys, Israel and Egypt. You've been very bad and
we're gonna have to come in and take over and
make sure things go okay. And then they get a
phone call from Israel and they're like, we're still forty
miles away from the Suez Canal. And at that point,
the whole world realizes that the UK and France were
in on this invasion of Egypt, and the world is pissed,
including the US, who's like, nobody thought to pick up
the phone and let us know what's going on here,
and so Dwight Eisenhower says to the UK, you know what,
I think We're going to sell all of our sterling bonds,
which is going to tank You're British pound. How about
we do that? And they're like Okay, wait, wait, wait, sorry,
and France kind of followed suit, but Israel, who looked
like a complete badass, said nope, we're sticking around because
they still have both of these trade routes blocked and
we came in and won, so we're going to stay
here until something gets figured out. So they stayed there
for four months. Finally an agreement was reached and the
straits of Tehran were opened up for them after an
eight year blockade. But this signified the end of the
UK as a world power because established that if they
want to do something, they better talk to us first. Okay, guys,
that does it for today's episode. Join us next time
for five minutes of fire. Grace Kelly, it's Gary Cooper.