Stories Behind the Headlines

In 1984, when reports of the famine in Ethiopia shook the world, the country found an unlikely hero in rocker Bob Geldof. He launched Band Aid, one of the first relief efforts of its kind.

"People were dying," Bob said. "So I thought it required something more than the charitable impulse and it required an effort of self, and all I could do, badly, as it was turning out, was write a couple of tunes."

One of those tunes, Do They Know It's Christmas? sold out in record time and millions of dollars starting pouring in for relief to Ethiopia. But Bob did not stop there. Next was Live Aid, two concerts of epic proportions held simultaneously in London and Philadelphia. For 10 hours on a day in July, 1.5 billion people, that's one-third of the entire planet, tuned in to see the biggest names in music perform to save a country.