It's been about as easy to miss Billy Joel lately as it is to miss a hurricane roaring through town. Though three years had passed since his last record and his career had appeared to be dying down, his latest album, "Storm Front," went to No. 1 on the pop charts and tickets for his current tour-which features his new band and a reportedly relaxed, 2 1/2-hour stroll through many highpoints in his two-decade career-went like hotcakes. (His shows at the Rosemont Horizon this Monday and Tuesday and April 23 and 24 are sold out.)

Fueling Joel's comeback is the first single from "Storm Front," "We Didn't Start the Fire." The ubiquitous little ditty offers a rapid-fire rundown of some key events and personages of the last 40 years. Joel has said the song was partly the result of his own desire to become a history teacher. Ironically, it has given him the opportunity to be just that as he recently recorded a special promotional cassette for Scholastic magazine that will go to 40,000 high school teachers along with a poster and lesson plan based on the song.

2. For 1951, Joel's song lists Panmunjom. That was the place for early talks aimed at ending the Korean War, a conflict that would, before its conclusion in 1953, become one of the bloodiest and costliest in human history. Panmunjom was selected in part because it was near the dividing line between North and South Korea. What was that dividing line?