September 5, 1950: Syria Adopts Its Constitution of Independence

Today in 1950 · Tuesday, September 5, 1950

The main boulevard of Damascus, photographed by the Matson studio, c. 1920

The main boulevard of Damascus, photographed by the Matson studio, c. 1920 · Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On this day in 1950, Syria formally adopted the constitution known ever since as the 'Constitution of Independence' — the first constitution the country wrote for itself after shaking off the French Mandate, whose 1930 charter had been drafted under foreign supervision.

The document was born from a turbulent year. After the coups of 1949, the drafting committee working under President Hashim al-Atassi went about its task with striking thoroughness, reviewing fifteen European and Asian constitutions in preparing the text. The result established a unitary parliamentary republic: a unicameral Chamber of Deputies, a Council of Ministers answerable to that chamber, and a presidency deliberately limited in power — a direct reaction to the year of military strongmen that had preceded it.

The University of Pennsylvania's library still catalogs the official English text as 'The Constitution of Syria of September 5, 1950.' The parliamentary experiment it launched would prove fragile, but the document remains a reference point in Syrian constitutional history — the moment the country wrote its own rules.

Also on this day

  • The Battle of Yongsan ended in a UN victory, blunting one prong of the Great Naktong Offensive.
  • On this single day, American battle casualties in Korea totaled 1,245 men — among the war's costliest days.

🎵 On the radio that week: America’s No. 1 song was “Goodnight Irene” by Gordon Jenkins and The Weavers (Billboard best sellers) — its 13 straight weeks at No. 1 was the longest run of the 1950s. That sound never really left — we recreate 1950s doo-wop and slow-dance ballads every week: read the stories behind our songs or listen on the lovesong1950s channel.
🎬 At the movies: “Broken Arrow” was widening across the country — the first major Hollywood Western to portray Native Americans sympathetically, with Jeff Chandler's Oscar-nominated Cochise.
⚾ In sports: The Labor Day standings showed the Phillies a comfortable seven games up on Brooklyn, and the Yankees clinging to a two-game AL edge with Detroit and Boston charging.

Sources: Penn Libraries: Constitution of Syria, Sep 5, 1950 · World Statesmen: Syria 1950 constitution text · ConstitutionNet: Syria · Wikipedia: September 1950 · Billboard best-seller charts, 1950 (issue scans) · Variety National Boxoffice Survey, 1950 (Lantern scans) · Retrosheet 1950 game logs and box scores. Every fact above is drawn from the records linked here — no dramatization, no invented details.

More from this series: Today in 1950 — the daily archive · every post from September 2026

Read nearby dates in 1950

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Postcard Heart – The 1950s Doo-Wop Love Letter That Never Needed a Stamp v.21

Image
Story Behind the Song · Postcard Heart , Track 1 ▶ The player starts right at this track (00:00). Let it keep playing for the full album. He only meant to buy a postcard. Blue sky, a little red canoe — the kind you send to someone far away with a line like "wish you were here." He was still writing it in his neatest hand when she walked past the postcard stand, and suddenly there was no faraway town worth wishing about. That is the whole heart of this song, and of the album that takes its name from it. The doo-wah harmonies bounce like a stamped envelope skipping across a mail sorter, while the lead vocal keeps one hand on the counter, half in love already. By the second verse they are taking the long way past the square, and a small heart drawn next to a name has quietly re-addressed his whole life. If you have ever mailed your feelings to the wrong distance, this opener sets them straight: the only address that matters is standing right in front of you. I...
Read more

August 23, 1950: The Flood After the Great Assam Earthquake

Image
Today in 1950 · Wednesday, August 23, 1950 Crew on the deck of a Brahmaputra River steamer, Assam region, 1895 — the river basin devastated by the 1950 earthquake · William Henry Jackson, Library of Congress, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons In late August 1950, the aftermath of one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded was still unfolding in northeast India. The magnitude 8.6 Assam-Tibet earthquake of August 15 — among the ten most powerful instrumentally recorded quakes in history — had sent enormous landslides into Himalayan river valleys, damming rivers including the Subansiri. About a week after the quake, the natural dam on the Subansiri burst. An eyewitness account preserved by the Assam Times records that the river 'remained blocked for five days' before a midnight flood surged through with twelve to fourteen feet of water, obliterating everything in its path. In the villages of Torajan and Ghasigaon, the account says, there were no survivors — not even...
Read more

Crying in the Chapel: The Orioles' 1953 Hit and Songwriter

Image
The Story Behind the Song · The Orioles, 1953 The Orioles in an early press photo by James J. Kriegsmann, taken before 1954 · Shaw Artists Corporation, published without copyright notice, public domain Who wrote Crying in the Chapel? Artie Glenn wrote "Crying in the Chapel," first recorded by his son Darrell Glenn on Valley Records. The Orioles recorded their version on June 30, 1953, and Jubilee released it that July. Their recording became a No. 1 R&B hit and crossed over to the pop charts. The Orioles’ Crying in the Chapel: the 1953 charts What happened next is the part worth remembering. By the Billboard issue dated September 5, 1953, the Orioles' record stood at No. 1 on both of the magazine's rhythm-and-blues charts at once — National Best Sellers and Most Played in Juke Boxes. A week later it was No. 11 on the pop Best Selling Singles chart. And it was not alone there: on a single page of that September 12 issue, four different versions of the sam...
Read more