1950s in Angola, Politics
Viriato da Cruz and others formed the Movement of Young Intellectuals, an organization that promoted Angolan culture, in 1948. Nationalists sent a letter to the United Nations calling for Angola to be given protectorate status under UN supervision. In 1953 Angolan nationalists founded the Party of the United Struggle for Africans in Angola (PLUA), the first political party to advocate Angolan independence from Portugal. Two years later Mário Pinto de Andrade and his brother Joaquim formed the Angolan Communist Party (PCA). In December 1956 PLUA merged with the PCA to form the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). The MPLA, led by da Cruz, Mário Andrade, Ilidio Machado, and Lúcio Lara, derived support from the Ambundu and in Luanda.


1950s in Angola, Politics
Congolese-Angolan nationalists formed the Union of Peoples of Northern Angola, which advocated the independence of the traditional Kingdom of Kongo, in 1954.


1950s in Angola, Politics
Portuguese police arrested Agostinho Neto of the MPLA and future President of Angola (1975–1979), in 1952 and again in 1955 for his involvement in the Portuguese Communist Party. He returned to Angola in 1959 and police arrested him again in 1960. Portuguese authorities arrested over 100 MPLA members in 1959.


1950s in Angola, Economy
The Portuguese discovered petroleum in Angola in 1955. Production began in the Cuanza basin in the 1950s, in the Congo basin in the 1960s, and in the exclave of Cabinda in 1968. The Belgian company Fina (today - 2007—a part of Total) was the first to be given a concession. The Portuguese colonial government granted operating rights for Block Zero to the Cabinda Gulf Oil Company (CABGOC), a subsidiary of the U.S. company Gulf Oil, now merged into ChevronTexaco, in 1955. The rate of Angola's economic expansion grew in the 1950s, but boomed in the 1960s as industries grew by an annual average rate of 17%. Today the petroleum industry is the engine of the Angolan economy.


1950s in Angola, Economy
After World War II, the Portuguese government encouraged citizens to move to Angola to compensate for unemployment. The white population in Angola increased from 79,000 in 1950 to 173,000 in 1960, with 55,000 living in Luanda alone.


1950s in Angola, Establishments
Colonial authorities established the Institute of Angola at Luanda in 1952, the Garcia de Orta journal in 1953, Center of Historical Studies Overseas in 1955, the Center of Political and Social Studies in 1956, the Center of Scientific Records Overseas in 1957, and the Center of Missionary Studies in 1959.


1950s in Ghana
1950s in Ghana details events of note that happened in Ghana in the years 1950 to 1959.


1950s in Ghana, National holidays
In addition, several other places observe local holidays, such as the founding of their towns. These are also "special days."


1950s in Hong Kong
The 1950s in Hong Kong began against the chaotic backdrop of the resumption of British sovereignty after the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong ended in 1945, and the renewal of the Nationalist-Communist Civil War in mainland China. It prompted a large influx of refugees from the mainland, causing a huge population surge: from 1945 to 1951, the population grew from 600,000 to 2.1 million. The government struggled to accommodate these immigrants. Unrest in China also prompted businesses to relocate their assets and capital from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Together with the cheap labour of the immigrants, the seeds of Hong Kong's economic miracle in the second half of the 20th century were sown.


1950s in Hong Kong, Background
As the Communists drew near to a victory in early 1949, there were fears that Hong Kong was going to be invaded by the Communists. The British Government was determined to keep Hong Kong as a capitalist outpost within a communist sphere of influence, though the memories of the Berlin Blockade and the perceived antagonism of communist governments was still fresh in their mind. The garrison was reinforced and plans of emergency evacuation to Australia were made. However, the People's Liberation Army were ordered to stop advancing at the border and Hong Kong remained a British colony.


1950s in Hong Kong, Background
Hong Kong was a valuable trade centre at the mouth of China and hoped that by retaining this connection doing business with the new government in Peking would be easier. To give up Hong Kong to the Communists without a fight would be seen as a national weakness in the face of the growing communist threat in Europe and Asia, especially the Emergency in Malaya.


1950s in Hong Kong, Background
Debates did take place during the 1950s at the British Parliament in Westminster in which it was discussed that Hong Kong would have to be handed back to China if the colony's entrepôt trade could not be maintained. The people were outraged at any suggestion of this, so the Government of Hong Kong became committed to turning Hong Kong into a manufacturing centre.


1950s in Hong Kong, Demographics, Population
The 1950s began with a large number of impoverished people without jobs and natural resources. The problem was further compounded with a flood of refugees from mainland China who were able to cross due to the lack of border controls until June 1951. The People's Republic of China was established in 1949 under a reorganised Communist Party.


1950s in Hong Kong, Demographics, Population
As many as 100,000 people fled to Hong Kong each month under the new regime, many of whom were rich farmers and capitalists who brought with them management experience, though even more were criminals who established the influential triad society in Hong Kong. By the mid-1950s, Hong Kong had increased its population to a staggering 2.2 million. By 1956, Hong Kong's population density became one of the highest in the world.


1950s in Hong Kong, Demographics, Housing
In 1953, the Shek Kip Mei Fire left 53,000 homeless. This prompted major change: Sir Alexander Grantham, the 22nd Governor of Hong Kong, drew up an emergency housing programme that introduced the 'multi-storey building' as a common building form. His structures were capable of housing 2,500 people in a fire/flood-proof structure. The idea was to house as many and as fast as possible to deal with the homeless shelter crisis. Every floor in the building incommunal room, washroom, and toilet facility. Each person was granted 24 square feet (2.2 m2) per adult and half that for each child under 12. High rise buildings would become the norm, as skyscrapers have a small footprint compared to their overall volume.


1950s in Hong Kong, Culture, Lifestyle
At the end of the Japanese occupation, the Government of Hong Kong held a monopoly on the purchase and distribution of food and raw materials including rice and cotton yarn. Price controls by the Government were not eliminated until 1953. The period can best be summarised by low resources and an endless increase in population. Many mainlanders would cross the border to Hong Kong and establish illegal huts on rooftops and edge of mountains. The integration of different groups from China and original tenants of Hong Kong would also create a society in which everyone had to wrestle with the overwhelming number of language dialects.


1950s in Hong Kong, Culture, Education
Those who were born in Hong Kong were provided with education and housing by the government. The first group of refugees were only granted temporary asylums since the government believed they would return to the mainland. An estimated 9% of the government's expense were spent on education and health care. The curriculum made it crucial that students did not feel associated with Hong Kong or China in any national sense. It emphasised that they were the middleman for the Sino-British trade relationships.


1950s in Hong Kong, Culture, Education
An internal government paper in the period indicated about 34 schools in the urban area were actually classified as controlled by the Communists, including 24 in the New Territories. Another 32 schools had leftist presences such as staff and teachers. A new ordinance was passed in 1952 to allow any director of education to shut down a school believed to be controlled by political indoctrination. The refugees mostly sought their education and social services from Christian churches. Actions were taken at the Heung Tao Middle School and Nanfang College.


1950s in Hong Kong, Culture, Entertainment
One of the main forms of entertainment in the 1950s was Cantonese Opera. Shaw Brothers Studio would also produce some of the first groups of martial art films. Their notable sword fighting style would be emulated on many movies and TV dramas for years to come.


1950s in Hong Kong, Culture, Law and order
The Hong Kong 1956 riots was one of the first full-scale riots in the territory. It awoke the Government to the dangers of low wages, long working hours, and overcrowded conditions. Tighter law control would diminish the triads in the period. Most of the social problems in the 1950s dealt with Nationalist and Communist factions on Hong Kong soil. The British Government in Whitehall, London, feared the Communists would promote anti-British sentiments in the colony. Thus, the Colonial Office in Whitehall encouraged the Government of Hong Kong to follow anti-Communist policies within the colony. The leading account of the 1956 riots appeared in a book by historian Rohan Price published by Routledge in 2020.


1950s in Hong Kong, Economy, Transportation
The Hong Kong Taxi service was founded in 1947 with just a mere 329 cars. By the end of the decade in 1959, it had expanded to 851 cars. The service became more popular since it didn't require passengers to follow a particular bus route.


1950s in Hong Kong, Economy, Industrial
In 1953, two land reclamation projects added 3,000,000 square feet (280,000 m2) to Hong Kong. The first project would specifically add runway space to the Kai Tak Airport. Additional reclamation would turn Kwun Tong and Tsuen Wan into industrial towns. The early industrial centres produced materials such as buttons, artificial flowers, umbrellas, textiles, enamelware, footwear and plastics.


1950s in Hong Kong, Economy, Hospital and hospitality
The handling of the refugees required the collaboration of numerous services and programs. The British Red Cross would set up their first branch in Hong Kong on 12 July 1950 as the Hong Kong Red Cross. They started in the Lai Chi Kok Hospital and began the Patient Concern Service. Blood donation also began in 1952 with 483 people donating in the first year. A Disaster Relief service was established in 1953 mostly to deal with the Shek Kip Mei fire. The Hong Kong Tourism Association was established in 1957.


1950s in Hong Kong, Economy, Finance
The banks at the time were not regulated by the Government. There were no central banks or monetary policies. The Governor did not want to regulate the Hong Kong Stock Exchange even though it had become a serious problem in financing the fast-growing economy at the time. Manufacturers constantly complained about the shortage of investments. Pressure was coming from within and outside Hong Kong to get the policies fixed.


1950s in LGBT rights
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place worldwide in the 1950s.


1950s in Southern Rhodesia
The Native Land Husbandry Act was passed in 1951. Morgan Tsvangirai, the head of the Movement for Democratic Change, was born in Gutu, Masvingo Province on 10 March 1952. Garfield Todd of the United Rhodesia Party became the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia in 1953. That same year, a referendum was held to decide if Southern Rhodesia should join with Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland formed on 1 August. The City Youth League formed in 1955. That same year, the government passed the Public Order Act, giving the police the power to detain and restrict individuals without trial. The City Youth League organized a bus boycott in Salisbury in 1956. Police arrested 200 CYL members.


1950s in comics
See also:1940s in comics,other events of the 1950s,1960s in comics and thelist of years in comics


1950s in comics
Publications: 1950 - 1951 - 1952 - 1953 - 1954 - 1955 - 1956 - 1957 - 1958 - 1959


1950s in film
The decade of the 1950s in film involved many significant films.


1950s in film, Events
Films of the 1950s were of a wide variety. As a result of the introduction of television, the studios and companies sought to put audiences back in theaters. They used more techniques in presenting their films through widescreen and big-approach methods, such as Cinemascope, VistaVision, and Cinerama, as well as gimmicks like 3-D film. Big production and spectacle films perfect for this gained popularity, with the many historic and fantasy epics like The Robe (1953),The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), The Ten Commandments (1956), The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), and Ben-Hur (1959). Other big-scoped films thrived internationally, too, such as Soviet fantasy director Aleksandr Ptushko's mythological epics Sadko, Ilya Muromets, and Sampo, and Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's historic Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and Rashomon. Toshiro Mifune, who starred in those Kurosawa films, also starred in the color spectacle Samurai Trilogy.


1950s in film, Events
This spectacle approach, coupled with Cold War paranoia, a renewed interest in science from the atomic bomb, as well as increased interest in the mysteries of outer space and other forteana, lent itself well to what this film decade is best known for, science fiction. The science fiction genre began its golden age during this decade with such notable films as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing from Another World (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), It Came from Outer Space (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Them!


1950s in film, Events
(1954), This Island Earth (1955), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), and Forbidden Planet (1956), as well as Japanese science fiction tokusatsu films. There were also Earth-based "sci-fi" subjects, including kaiju films such as the Godzilla series as well as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and When Worlds Collide (1951). Companies such as American International Pictures, Japan's Toho, and Britain's Hammer Film Productions were created to solely produce films of the fantastique genres.


1950s in film, Events
The decade was equally adept at both character and realistic films. The highly noted actors James Stewart, John Wayne, and Marlon Brando were at the peak of their popularity. Stewart, starring in Winchester '73, and Wayne, starring in John Ford's Cavalry Trilogy and The Searchers, revitalized the western. Brando mastered versatile roles in films such as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Wild One (1953), Julius Caesar, On the Waterfront (1954), Guys and Dolls (1955), The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), and Sayonara (1957).


1950s in film, Events
Director Alfred Hitchcock was at the peak of his craft, with films such as Strangers on a Train (1951), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958), and North by Northwest (1959), with James Stewart and Grace Kelly starring in three each. The Bengali Indian director Satyajit Ray, who began his career in the 1950s, was also at the peak of his career during this decade, with films such as The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), Jalsaghar (1958), and Parash Pathar (1958).


1950s in jazz
By the end of the 1940s, the nervous energy and tension of bebop was replaced with a tendency towards calm and smoothness, with the sounds of cool jazz, which favoured long, linear melodic lines. It emerged in New York City, as a result of the mixture of the styles of predominantly white swing jazz musicians and predominantly black bebop musicians, and it dominated jazz in the first half of the 1950s.


1950s in jazz
The starting point were a series of singles on Capitol Records in 1949 and 1950 of a nonet led by trumpeter Miles Davis, collected and released first on a ten-inch and later a twelve-inch as the Birth of the Cool. Cool jazz recordings by Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Stan Getz and the Modern Jazz Quartet usually have a "lighter" sound which avoided the aggressive tempos and harmonic abstraction of bebop.


1950s in jazz
Cool jazz later became strongly identified with the West Coast jazz scene, but also had a particular resonance in Europe, especially Scandinavia, with emergence of such major figures as baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin and pianist Bengt Hallberg. The theoretical underpinnings of cool jazz were set out by the blind Chicago pianist Lennie Tristano, and its influence stretches into such later developments as Bossa nova, modal jazz, and even free jazz. See also the list of cool jazz and West Coast musicians for further detail.


1950s in jazz
Hard bop, an extension of bebop (or "bop") music that incorporates influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing,  developed in the mid-1950s, partly in response to the vogue for cool jazz in the early 1950s. The hard bop style coalesced in 1953 and 1954, paralleling the rise of rhythm and blues. Miles Davis' performance of "Walkin'" the title track of his album of the same year, at the first Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, announced the style to the jazz world. The quintet Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, fronted by Blakey and featuring pianist Horace Silver and trumpeter Clifford Brown, were leaders in the hard bop movement along with Davis. (See also List of Hard bop musicians)


1950s in jazz
Modal jazz recordings, such as Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, became popular in the late 1950s. Popular modal standards include Davis's "All Blues" and "So What" (both 1959), John Coltrane's "Impressions" (1963) and Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage" (1965). Later, Davis's "second great quintet", which included saxophonist Wayne Shorter and pianist Herbie Hancock, recorded a series of highly acclaimed albums in the mid-to-late 1960s. Standards from these sessions include Shorter's "Footprints" (1966) and Eddie Harris's "Freedom Jazz Dance" (1966).


1950s in jazz
In Brazil, a new style of music called bossa nova evolved in the late 1950s. The free jazz movement, coming to prominence in the late 1950s, spawned very few standards. Free jazz's unorthodox structures and performance techniques are not as amenable to transcription as other jazz styles. However, "Lonely Woman" (1959) a blues by saxophonist Ornette Coleman, is perhaps the closest thing to a standard in free jazz, having been recorded by dozens of notable performers.


1950s in motorsport
This article documents the status of motorsports in the 1950s.


1950s in music
This article includes an overview of the major events and trends in popular music in the 1950s.


1950s in music, Genres
Various genre in the First World, rock and roll, doo-wop, pop, swing, rhythm and blues, blues, Country music, rockabilly, and jazz music dominated and defined the decade's music.


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
Rock and roll dominated popular music in the mid 1950s and late 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music; with country and western and Pop. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music.


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the big boom electric guitar (developed and popularized by Les Paul). Paul's hit records like "How High the Moon", and "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise", helped lead to the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing of such complicated exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray, and Scotty Moore.


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
Chuck Berry, who is considered to be one of the pioneers of Rock and roll music, refined and developed the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, focusing on teen life and introducing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music. A decade earlier, Sister Rosetta Tharpe fused gospel and blues, inventing rock 'n roll electric guitar by developing sophisticated phrasing and licks that served as the basis for the iconic rock guitar style of the 1950s and beyond.


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
Artists such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and His Comets, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Big Joe Turner, and Gene Vincent released the initial rhythm and blues-influenced early rock and roll hits. Rock and roll forerunners in the popular music field included Johnnie Ray, The Crew-Cuts, The Fontane Sisters, and Les Paul and Mary Ford. The Rock and Roll Era is generally dated from the 25 March 1955 premiere of the motion picture, "The Blackboard Jungle". This film’s use of Bill Haley and His Comets' "(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" during the opening credits caused a national sensation when teenagers started dancing in the aisles.


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
Pat Boone became one of the most successful artists of the 50s with his heavily Pop-influenced "covers" of R&B hits like "Two Hearts, Two Kisses (Make One Love)", "Ain't That a Shame", and "At My Front Door (Crazy Little Mama)". Boone got his fame by covering black R&B hits, his cover versions of the original artists outsold the originals. Boone removed the raw feel of the original versions and replaced it with his own voice making it safer and appropriate for mainstream pop radio stations at the time.


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
Boone later found success by ballads and less by R&B covers because R&B covers were declining due to the fact that most people at the time were preferring the originals. Boone's traditional pop approach to rock and roll, coupled with his All-American, clean-cut image helped bring the new sound to a much wider audience.


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
Elvis Presley, who began his career in the mid-1950s, was the most successful artist of the popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances, motion pictures, and chart-topping records. Elvis also brought rock and roll widely into the mainstream of popular culture. Elvis popularized the four-man group and also brought the guitar to become the lead instrument in rock music. Presley popularized rockabilly, a genre that combined country with rhythm and blues which some claimed it was a new sound. Some claimed that Presley invented the genre by combining country with rhythm and blues.


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
Elvis became the biggest pop craze since Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial during that period. Presley's massive success brought rock and roll widely into the mainstream and made it easier for African-American musicians to achieve mainstream success on the pop charts. Boone and Presley's styles/images represented opposite ends of the burgeoning musical form, Boone was known as being safe while Presley was known as being dangerous, which competed with one another throughout the remainder of the decade.


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
In 1957, a popular television show featuring rock and roll performers, American Bandstand, went national. Hosted by Dick Clark, the program helped to popularize the more clean-cut, All-American brand of rock and roll. By the end of the decade, teen idols like Bobby Darin, Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, Bobby Rydell, Connie Francis, and Fabian Forte were topping the charts. Some commentators have perceived this as the decline of rock and roll; citing the deaths of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a tragic plane crash in 1959 and the departure of Elvis for the army as causes.


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
On the other side of the spectrum, R&B-influenced acts like The Crows, The Penguins, The El Dorados and The Turbans all scored major hits, and groups like The Platters, with songs including "The Great Pretender" (1955), and The Coasters with humorous songs like "Yakety Yak" (1958), ranked among the most successful rock and roll acts of the period.


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
Rock and roll has also been seen as leading to a number of distinct subgenres, including rockabilly (see below) in the 1950s, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in the mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley. Another subgenre, Doo Wop, entered the pop charts in the 1950s. Its popularity would spawn the parody "Who Put the Bomp".


1950s in music, United States, Rock and roll
Novelty songs, long a music industry staple, continued their popularity in the Rock and Roll medium with hits such as "Beep Beep".


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
Popular music dominated the charts for the first half of the decade. Vocal-driven classic pop replaced big band/swing at the end of World War II, although it often used orchestras to back the vocalists. 1940s style Crooners vied with a new generation of big-voiced singers, many drawing on Italian Canto Bella traditions. Mitch Miller, A&R man at the era's most successful label, Columbia Records, set the tone for the development of popular music well into the middle of the decade.


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
Miller integrated country, Western, rhythm & blues, and folk music into the musical mainstream, by having many of his label's biggest artists record them in a style that corresponded to Pop traditions. Miller often employed novel and ear-catching arrangements featuring classical instruments (whooping french horns, harpsichord), or sound effects (whip cracks). He approached each record as a miniature story, often "casting" the vocalist according to type.


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
(Mitch) Miller and the producers who followed his model was creating a new sort of pop record. Instead of capturing the sound of live groups, they were making three-minute musicals, matching singers to songs in the same way that movie producers matched stars to film roles. As Miller told "Time" magazine in 1951, "Every singer has certain sounds he makes better than others. Frankie Laine is sweat and hard words—he's a guy beating the pillow, a purveyor of basic emotions. Guy Mitchell is better with happy-go-lucky songs; he's a virile young singer, gives people a vicarious lift. Rosemary Clooney is a barrelhouse dame, a hillbilly at heart." It was a way of thinking perfectly suited to the new market in which vocalists were creating unique identities and hit songs were performed as television skits.


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
Whereas big band/swing music placed the primary emphasis on the orchestration, post-war/early 1950s era Pop focused on the song’s story and/or the emotion being expressed. By the early 1950s, emotional delivery had reached its apex in the miniature psycho-drama songs of writer-singer Johnnie Ray. Known as "The Cry Guy" and "The Prince of Wails", Ray's on-stage emotion wrought "breakdowns" provided a release for the pent-up angst of his predominantly teenage fans. As Ray described it, "I make them feel, I exhaust them, I destroy them." It was during this period that the fan hysteria, which began with Frank Sinatra during the Second World War, really began to take hold.


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
Although often ignored by musical historians, Pop music played a significant role in the development of rock 'n' roll as well:


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
[ Mitch] Miller also conceived of the idea of the pop record "sound" per se: not so much an arrangement or a tune, but an aural texture (usually replete with extramusical gimmicks) that could be created in the studio and then replicated in live performance, instead of the other way around. Miller was hardly a rock 'n' roller, yet without these ideas, there could never have been rock 'n' roll. "Mule Train", Miller's first major hit (for Frankie Laine) and the foundation of his career, set the pattern for virtually the entire first decade of rock. The similarities between it and, say, "Leader of the Pack," need hardly be outlined here.


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
Patti Page kicked things off with what would become the decade's biggest hit, "Tennessee Waltz". Her other hits from this period included: "Mister and Mississippi", "Mockin' Bird Hill", "Detour", "(How Much Is That) Doggie in the Window", and "Old Cape Cod". Frankie Laine's 1949 hits, "That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day)" and "Mule Train", were still riding high on the charts when the decade began.


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
He continued to score with such hits as: "Georgia on My Mind", "Cry of the Wild Goose", "Jezebel", "Rose, Rose, I Love You", "Jealousy (Jalousie)", "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me)", "I Believe", "Granada", "Moonlight Gambler", and "Rawhide". Johnnie Ray had a long run of hits in the early half of the decade, often backed by The Four Lads, including: "Cry", "The Little White Cloud That Cried", "Walking My Baby Back Home", "Please, Mr. Sun", and "Just Walkin' in the Rain".


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
The Four Lads racked up some hits on their own with "Who Needs You", "No, Not Much", "Standin' on the Corner", and "Moments to Remember". Nat "King" Cole dominated the charts throughout the decade with such timeless classics as "Unforgettable", "Mona Lisa", "Too Young", "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup", "Pretend", "Smile", and "A Blossom Fell". Perry Como was another frequent visitor to the charts with hits like: "If", "Round and Round", "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes", "Tina Marie", "Papa Loves Mambo", and "Catch a Falling Star".


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
Other major stars in the early 1950s included Frank Sinatra ("Young at Heart", "Three Coins in the Fountain", "Witchcraft"), Tony Bennett ("Cold, Cold Heart", "Because of You", "Rags to Riches"), Kay Starr ("Bonaparte's Retreat", "Wheel of Fortune", "Rock and Roll Waltz"), Rosemary Clooney ("Come On-a My House", "Mambo Italiano", "Half as Much", "This Ole House"), Dean Martin ("That's Amore", "Return to Me", "Sway"), Georgia Gibbs ("Kiss of Fire", "Dance With Me, Henry", "Tweedle Dee"), Eddie Fisher ("Anytime", "Wish You Were Here", "Thinking of You", "I'm Walking Behind You", "Oh! My Pa-Pa", "Fanny"), Teresa Brewer ("Music! Music! Music!


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
", "Till I Waltz Again With You", "Ricochet(Rick-O-Shay)"), Doris Day ("Secret Love", "Whatever Will Be Will Be (Que Sera Sera)", "Teacher's Pet"), Guy Mitchell ("My Heart Cries for You", "The Roving Kind", "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania", "Singing the Blues"), Bing Crosby ("Play a Simple Melody with son Gary Crosby, "True Love with Grace Kelly), Dinah Shore ("Lavender Blue"), Kitty Kallen ("Little Things Mean a Lot"), Joni James ("Have You Heard", "Wishing Ring", "Your Cheatin' Heart"), Peggy Lee ("Lover", "Fever"), Julie London ("Cry Me a River"), Toni Arden ("Padre"), June Valli ("Why Don't You Believe Me"), Arthur Godfrey ("Slowpoke"), Tennessee Ernie Ford ("Sixteen Tons"), Les Paul and Mary Ford ("Vaya Con Dios", "Tiger Rag"), and vocal groups like The Mills Brothers ("Glow Worm"), The Weavers "(Goodnight Irene"), The Four Aces ("Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing", "(It's No) Sin"), The Chordettes ("Mister Sandman"), Fontane Sisters ("Hearts of Stone"), The Hilltoppers ("Trying", "P.S. I Love You"), The McGuire Sisters ("Sincerely", "Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite", "Sugartime") and The Ames Brothers ("Ragmop" "The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane").


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
Classic pop declined in popularity as Rock and roll entered the mainstream and became a major force in American record sales. Crooners such as Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Patti Page, who had dominated the first half of the decade, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed by the decade's end. However, new Pop vocalists continued to rise to prominence throughout the decade, many of whom started out singing Rock 'n' Roll.


1950s in music, United States, Classic pop
These include: Pat Boone ("Don’t Forbid Me", "April Love", "Love Letters in the Sand"), Anita Bryant ("Till There Was You", "Paper Roses"), Connie Francis ("Who’s Sorry Now", "Among My Souvenirs", "My Happiness"), Gogi Grant ("Suddenly There’s a Valley", "The Wayward Wind"), Bobby Darin ("Dream Lover", "Beyond the Sea", "Mack the Knife"),  and Andy Williams ("Canadian Sunset", "Butterfly", "Hawaiian Wedding Song"). Even Rock 'n' Roll icon Elvis Presley spent the rest of his career alternating between Pop and Rock ("Love Me Tender", "Loving You", "I Love You Because"). Pop would resurface on the charts in the mid-1960s as "Adult Contemporary".


1950s in music, United States, R&B
In 1951, Little Richard Penniman began recording for RCA Records in the late-1940s jump blues style of Joe Brown and Billy Wright. However, it wasn't until he prepared a demo in 1954, that caught the attention of Specialty Records, that the world would start to hear his new, uptempo, funky rhythm and blues that would catapult him to fame in 1955 and help define the sound of rock and roll. A rapid succession of rhythm-and-blues hits followed, beginning with "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally", which would influence performers such as James Brown, Elvis Presley, and Otis Redding.


1950s in music, United States, R&B
At the urging of Leonard Chess at Chess Records, Chuck Berry had reworked a country fiddle tune with a long history, entitled "Ida Red". The resulting "Maybellene" was not only a #3 hit on the R&B charts in 1955, but also reached into the top 30 on the pop charts.


1950s in music, United States, R&B
Stax Records was founded in 1957 as Satellite Records. The label was a major factor in the creation of the Southern soul and Memphis soul styles.


1950s in music, United States, R&B
In 1959, two black-owned record labels, one of which would become hugely successful, made their debut: Sam Cooke's Sar, and Berry Gordy's Motown Records.


1950s in music, United States, Blues
Blues had a huge influence on mainstream American popular music in the 1950s with the enthusiastic playing styles of popular musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, departed from the melancholy aspects of blues and influenced Rock and roll music.


1950s in music, United States, Blues
Ray Charles and Fats Domino help bring blues into the popular music scene. Domino provides a boogie-woogie style that heavily influences rock 'n' roll.


1950s in music, United States, Blues
Big Mama Thornton records the original version of "Hound Dog".


1950s in music, United States, Country music
Country music stars in the early 1950s included Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Bill Monroe, Eddy Arnold, Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, Jim Reeves, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Chet Atkins and Kitty Wells.


1950s in music, United States, Country music
Wells' 1952 hit "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" became the first single by a solo female artist to top the U.S. country charts.


1950s in music, United States, Country music
"It Wasn't God ... " was a landmark single in several ways; it began a trend of "answer" songs, or songs written and recorded in response to (or to counterpoint) a previously popular song – in this case, "The Wild Side of Life" by Hank Thompson – and for Wells, began a trend of female singers who defied the typical stereotype of being submissive to men and putting up with their oft-infidel ways, both in their personal lives and in their songs.


1950s in music, United States, Country music
Early in the decade, the honky-tonk style dominated country music, with songs of heartbreak, loneliness, alcoholism and despair the overriding themes. Long regarded the master of these themes was Hank Williams, whose critically acclaimed songwriting resulted in a string of legendary hits and songs, such as "Cold, Cold Heart", "Your Cheating Heart", "Why Don't You Love Me" and many more titles. Williams also lived hard, and on 1 January 1953, died. His legacy, however, would live on in country music for decades to come, and be vastly influential to new stars including a young Saratoga, Texas native named George Jones.


1950s in music, United States, Country music
Jones, just 23 when he had his first national hit – "Why Baby Why" – would go on to become one of country music's most iconic figures for the next 55-plus years. Although some of his early songs included rockabilly (usually recorded under the pseudonym Thumper Jones), he stayed true to the honky-tonk style for most of his career. In addition to "Why Baby Why," his biggest 1950s hits included "What Am I Worth", "Treasure of Love", "Just One More" and his first No. 1 hit, "White Lightning", and by the end of the 1990s, that number would increase to more than 100 hit songs.


1950s in music, United States, Country music
Besides Williams and Jones, the most popular honky tonk-styled singers included Lefty Frizzell, Carl Smith and Webb Pierce.


1950s in music, United States, Country music
In 1955, Ozark Jubilee nearly began a nearly six-year run on ABC-TV, the first national TV show to feature country's biggest stars.


1950s in music, United States, Country music
By the late 1950s, the Nashville sound became country music's response to continued encroachment of genre by rock artists. This new style emphasized string sections, background vocals and crooning lead vocals in the vein of mainstream popular music, but utilizing production styles and themes seen in country music. Artists like Eddy Arnold and Jim Reeves, both whom had been well established earlier in the decade, were early pioneers in this style, which went on to see its greatest success in the 1960s. One of the first major Nashville Sound hits was "Oh, Lonesome Me" by Don Gibson.


1950s in music, United States, Country music
Also popular was the "saga song", often a song with a historical background or having themes of violence, adultery and so forth. Songs by artists such as Johnny Horton ("The Battle of New Orleans" and "When It's Springtime in Alaska"), Stonewall Jackson ("Waterloo"), Marty Robbins ("El Paso") and Lefty Frizzell ("Long Black Veil") dominated the charts starting in 1959 and continuing into the early 1960s.


1950s in music, United States, Country music
The late 1950s saw the emergence of the Lubbock sound, but by the end of the decade, backlash as well as traditional country music artists such as Ray Price, Marty Robbins, and Johnny Horton began to shift the industry away from the rock n' roll influences of the mid-1950s.


1950s in music, United States, Country music
Rockabilly emerged in the early 1950s as a fusion of rock and roll and country music. Rockabilly was most popular with country fans in the 1950s. The music was propelled by catchy beats, an electric guitar and an acoustic bass which was played using the slap-back technique. Rockabilly is generally considered to have begun in the early 1950s, when musicians like Bill Haley began mixing jump blues and electric country. In 1954, however, Elvis Presley truly began the popularization of the genre with a series of recordings for Sun Records. "Rock Around the Clock" (1955, Bill Haley) was the breakthrough success for the style, and it launched the careers of several rockabilly entertainers.


1950s in music, United States, Country music
During this period Elvis Presley converted over to country music. He played a huge role in the music industry during this time. The number two, three and four songs on Billboard's charts for that year were Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel;" Johnny Cash, "I Walk the Line;" and Carl Perkins, "Blue Suede Shoes". Cash and Presley placed songs in the top 5 in 1958 with No. 3 "Guess Things Happen That Way/Come In, Stranger" by Cash, and No. 5 by Presley "Don't/I Beg of You".


1950s in music, United States, Country music
Presley acknowledged the influence of rhythm and blues artists and his style, saying "The coloured folk been singin' and playin' it just the way I'm doin' it now, man for more years than I know." By 1958, many rockabilly musicians returned to a more mainstream style or had defined their own unique style and rockabilly had largely disappeared from popular music, although its influences would remain into the future.


1950s in music, United States, Jazz
Bebop, Hard bop, Cool jazz and the Blues gained popularity during the 1950s while prominent Jazz musicians who came into prominence in these genres included Lester Young, Ben Webster, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Art Tatum, Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal, Oscar Peterson, Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan, Cannonball Adderley, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Art Blakey, Max Roach, the Miles Davis Quintet, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, and Billie Holiday.


1950s in music, United States, Other trends
In 1956 the American musician of Jamaican descent Harry Belafonte popularized the Calypso music Caribbean musical style which became a worldwide craze with the release of his rendition traditional Jamaican folk song "Banana Boat Song" from his 1956 album Calypso. The album later became the first full-length record to sell more than a million copies, and Belafonte was dubbed the "King of Calypso".


1950s in music, United States, Folk music
The Weavers, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, The Kingston Trio, Odetta, and several other performers were instrumental in launching the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.


1950s in music, Europe
During the 1950s European popular music give way to the influence of American forms of music including jazz, swing and traditional pop, mediated through film and records. The significant change of the mid-1950s was the impact of American rock and roll, which provided a new model for performance and recording, based on a youth market. Initially this was dominated by American acts, or re-creations of American forms of music, but soon distinctly European Bands and individual artists began in early attempts to produce local Rock and roll music.


1950s in music, Europe
The European Broadcasting Union started the Eurovision Song Contest in 1956, a song contest to unite war-torn Europe. Seven countries participated in the first contest in Lugano, Switzerland. This contest generally introduced local stars or stars-to-be wider, not only singers but also other people in music as well. Some of these people include Franck Pourcel, Dolf van der Linden and Kai Mortensen in the 1950s. Ballad is the most common genre at that time. Two veterans won in the first two years, Lys Assia who is the only Swiss citizen to win and Dutchwoman Corry Brokken.


1950s in music, Europe
The most famous singer and song in the decade was the Italian entry in 1958. Domenico Modugno with Grammy-winning song commonly called Volare. Italy finished third to Andre Claveau, representing France. Beating Brokken in the national final, Teddy Scholten won its second victory for the Netherlands in 1959. Her song is the only non-ballad winner in the first nine years of the grand prix. Willy van Hemert co-written both Dutch winning songs.


1950s in music, Latin America
Hispanics, young and old, could find comfort in the popular rhythmic sounds of Latin music that reminded them of home; mambo, cha-cha, merengue and salsa. Tito Puente, an American born Boricua (Puerto Rican), revolutionized the Latin music of the time. He incorporated many new percussion and woodwind instruments into the popular Latin sound. The Hispanics in the U.S. certainly were able to conform with the popular vibes.


1950s in music, Latin America
In Brazil, Bossa Nova was created in the city of Rio de Janeiro


1950s in music, Latin America
The Cuban bolero has traveled to Mexico and the rest of Latin America after its conception, where it became part of their repertoires. Some of the bolero's leading composers have come from nearby countries, most especially the prolific Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández; another example is Mexico's Agustín Lara. Some Cuban composers of the bolero are listed under Trova. Some successful Mexican bolero composers are María Grever, Gonzalo Curiel Barba, Gabriel Ruiz, and Consuelo Velázquez which song Verdad Amarga (Bitter Truth) was the most popular in Mexico in the year 1948.


1950s in music, Latin America
Another composer Armando Manzanero widely considered the premier Mexican romantic composer of the postwar era and one of the most successful composers of Latin America has composed more than four hundred songs, fifty of which have given him international fame.


1950s in music, Latin America
His most famous songs include Voy a apagar la luz (I'm Going to Turn Off the Lights), Contigo Aprendí (With you I Learnt... ), Adoro (Adore), No sé tú (I don't know if you...), Por Debajo de la Mesa (Under the Table) Esta Tarde Vi Llover (English version "Yesterday I Heard the Rain"), Somos Novios (English version "It's Impossible"), Felicidad (Happiness) and Nada Personal (Nothing Personal).


1950s in music, Latin America
Some renowned trios románticos were Trio Los Panchos, Los Tres Ases, Los Tres Diamantes and Los Dandys. Trio Bolero, a unique ensemble of two guitars and one cello. Other singers in singing boleros in Mexico are Óscar Chávez, José Ángel Espinoza and Álvaro Carrillo.


1950s in music, Australia and New Zealand
By the end of the decade, as the rock and roll style had spread throughout the world, it soon caught on with Australian teens. Johnny O'Keefe became perhaps the first modern rock star of the country, and began the field of rock music in Australia.


1950s in music, Australia and New Zealand
New Zealand was introduced to Rock and roll by Johnny Cooper's cover of "Rock Around the Clock".


1950s in music, Australia and New Zealand
After Rock and roll had been introduced, the most famous of New Zealand's cover artists were: Johnny Devlin, Max Merit and the Meteors, Ray Columbus and the Invaders and Dinah Lee.


1950s in sociology
The following events related to sociology occurred in the 1950s.


1950s quiz show scandals
The American quiz show scandals of the 1950s were a series of revelations that contestants of several popular television quiz shows were secretly given assistance by show producers, to prearrange the outcome of ostensibly fair competitions. The 1950s quiz show scandals were driven by a variety of reasons, including greed, willing contestants, and the lack of regulations prohibiting such conspiracy in game show productions.


1950s quiz show scandals, Background
Television quiz shows had their foundations established by earlier shows on radio. One of the first radio quiz shows in the United States was Information Please in 1938, and one of the first major successes was Dr. I.Q. in 1939. Winner Take All, a Goodson-Todman Production which premiered in 1946, was the first to use lock-out devices and feature returning champions.


1950s quiz show scandals, Background
A variant of the quiz show, the giveaway show, appeared in 1948 when the ABC Radio Network introduced Stop the Music, in which people randomly called by telephone and members of a studio audience would identify music to win prizes provided by the show's sponsor. Stop the Music and other giveaway shows were popular both for the size of prizes they could give away, and for the drama produced when random people were called and given the chance to win them. The FCC attempted to ban the giveaway show in August 1949, calling it a form of an illegal lottery. A judicial stay was quickly put in place, and although in 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Federal Communications Commission v. American Broadcasting Co., Inc. 347 U.S. 284 that giveaway shows were not a form of gambling, by this time the allure of the giveaway was in decline.


1950s quiz show scandals, Background
New ideas were needed in game shows to provide television audiences with the big prize stakes and contestant drama they enjoyed, and all of this laid the groundwork for a new generation of quiz shows, with unprecedented prize levels. The $64,000 Question became the first big-money prime-time television quiz show in 1955, with Joyce Brothers becoming the first woman to earn the $64,000 prize. It was revealed later that the show was “controlled”; the producers did not want Brothers to win and deliberately gave her questions perceived to be beyond her ability, which she answered correctly anyway. The $64,000 Question was one of the game shows ultimately implicated to be fixed in some fashion.


1950s quiz show scandals, Background
In September 1956, the Jack Barry-hosted game show Twenty-One premiered, with its first show being played legitimately, with no manipulation of the game by the producers whatsoever. That initial broadcast was, in the words of co-producer Dan Enright, "a dismal failure"; the first two contestants succeeded only in making a mockery of the format by showing how little they really knew by guessing many questions incorrectly. Show sponsor Geritol, upon seeing this opening-night performance, reportedly became furious with the results and said in no uncertain terms that they did not want to see a repeat performance. According to Enright in a 1992 PBS documentary, "from that moment on, we decided to rig Twenty-One."


1950s quiz show scandals, Background
Three months into its run, Twenty-One featured a contestant, Herb Stempel, who had been coached by Enright to allow his opponent, Charles Van Doren, to win the game. Stempel took the fall as requested. A year later, Stempel told the New York Journal-American's Jack O'Brian that his winning run as champion on the series had been choreographed to his advantage, and that the show's producer then ordered him to purposely lose his championship to Van Doren. With no proof, an article was never printed.


1950s quiz show scandals, Background
Stempel's statements gained more credibility when match fixing in another game, Dotto, was publicized in August 1958. Quiz show ratings across the networks plummeted and several were cancelled amid allegations of fixing. The revelations were sufficient to initiate a nine-month long New York County grand jury. No indictments were handed down, and the findings of the grand jury were sealed by judge's order. A formal congressional subcommittee investigation began in summer 1959. Enright was revealed to have rigged Twenty-One; Van Doren also eventually came forth with revelations about how he was persuaded to accept specific answers during his time on the show. As a result, many contestants' reputations were tarnished.


1950s quiz show scandals, Background
In 1960, the United States Congress amended the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit the fixing of quiz shows. As a result of that action, many networks canceled their existing quiz shows and replaced them with a higher number of public service programs. Most networks also imposed a winnings and appearances limit on their existing and future game shows, which would eventually be removed by inflation and the rise of the million-dollar jackpot game shows starting in 1999.


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), Twenty-One
In late 1956, Herb Stempel was a contestant on Twenty-One who was coached by Enright. While Stempel was in the midst of his winning streak, both of the $64,000 quiz shows were in the top-ten rated programs but Twenty-One did not have the same popularity. Enright and his partner, Albert Freedman, were searching for a new champion to replace Stempel to boost ratings. They soon found what they were looking for in Van Doren, who was an English teacher at Columbia University when a friend suggested he try out for a quiz show.


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), Twenty-One
Van Doren decided to try out for the quiz show Tic-Tac-Dough. Enright, who produced both Tic-Tac-Dough and Twenty-One, saw Van Doren's tryout and was familiar with his prestigious family background that included multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and highly respected professors at Columbia University. As a result, Enright felt that Van Doren would be the perfect contestant to be the new face of Twenty-One. As part of their plan, the producers of Twenty-One arranged the first Van Doren-Stempel face-off to end in three ties. As prize money per-point in the margin of victory increased by $500 after each tie game, the next game would offer $2,000 for every point the winner led by; this was duly-noted in promotion of the following week's episode, which helped to attract significant viewership.


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), Twenty-One
After achieving winnings of $69,500, Stempel's scripted loss to the more popular Van Doren occurred on December 5, 1956. One of the questions Stempel answered incorrectly involved the winner of the 1955 Academy Award for Best Motion Picture (the correct answer was Marty, one of Stempel's favorite movies; as instructed by Enright, Stempel gave the incorrect answer On the Waterfront, winner of Best Motion Picture the previous year).


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), Twenty-One
Although the manipulation of the contestants on Twenty-One helped the producers maintain viewer interest and ratings, the producers had not anticipated the extent of Stempel's resentment at being required to lose the contest against Van Doren. Initially, Stempel was dismissed as a sore loser, due in part to the fact that there was no solid reason to question the reputations of the quiz shows themselves.


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), The Big Surprise
In December 1956, a contestant on The Big Surprise, Dale Logue, filed a lawsuit against the show, seeking $103,000 in monetary damages or reinstatement on the show as a contestant. Her claim was that, after being asked a question she did not know in a "warm-up" session, that she was asked the same question again during the televised show. Her assertion was that this was done intentionally, with the express purpose of eliminating her as a contestant.


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), The Big Surprise
At the time Logue's lawsuit was filed, Steve Carlin, executive producer of Entertainment Productions, Inc. (the producers of The Big Surprise) called her claim "ridiculous and hopeless". Assertions that Logue had been offered $10,000 to settle in January 1957 were called baseless. Charles Revson, head of Revlon and The Big Surprise's primary sponsor, asked the producers of the show if Logue's accusation was true, and was told that it was not. The Big Surprise was cancelled by April 1957, after a low level Federal Trade Commission investigation had been launched. Concluded a year later, the FTC only sought statements from the producers of the show asserting that it was above board.


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), The Big Surprise
In April 1957, Time magazine had published an article asserting the depths to which producers managed game shows, to depths just short of involving the contestants themselves. This was followed by the August 20, 1957 Look magazine article "Are TV Quiz Shows Fixed?" which concluded "it may be more accurate to say they are controlled or partially controlled." Doubt had now been sown about the integrity of the shows.


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), Dotto
In August 1958, the abrupt cancellation of the quiz show Dotto bolstered Stempel and Logue's credibility of contestant involvement in rigging, when Edward Hilgemeier, Jr, a stand-by contestant three months earlier, sent an affidavit to the Federal Communications Commission claiming that while backstage, he had found a notebook containing the very answers contestant Marie Winn was delivering on stage. Although the reason for Dotto's August cancellation was never given to the press, it was worked out in the days after that the reason was the implication that the game had been fixed.


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), Dotto
The story of fixing was widely known soon after. The American public's reactions were quick and powerful when the quiz show fraud became public: between 87% and 95% knew about the scandals as measured by industry-sponsored polls. Through late 1958 and early 1959, quiz shows implicated by the scandal were quickly cancelled. Among them, with their last-aired dates, were the following shows:


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), Dotto
Late in August 1958, New York prosecutor Joseph Stone convened a grand jury to investigate the allegations of the fixing of quiz shows. At the time of the empaneling, neither being a party to a fixed game show nor fixing a game show in the first place were crimes in their own right. Some witnesses in the grand jury acknowledged their role in a fixed show, while others denied it, directly contradicting one another.


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), Dotto
Many of the coached contestants, who had become celebrities due to their quiz show success, were so afraid of the social repercussions of admitting the fraud that they were unwilling to confess to having been coached, even to the point of perjuring themselves to avoid backlash. Show producers, who had legally rigged the games to increase ratings but did not want to implicate themselves, the show sponsors or the networks they worked for in doing so, categorically denied the allegations.


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), Dotto
After the nine-month grand jury, no indictments were handed down and the judge sealed the grand jury report in Summer 1959. The 86th United States Congress, by then in its first session, soon responded; in October 1959, the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight, under Representative Oren Harris' chairmanship, began to hold hearings investigating the scandal. Stempel, Snodgrass and Hilgemeier all testified. Van Doren, initially reluctant, finally agreed to testify also in a press conference on October 15. The House committee then announced plans to expand their probe into quiz shows.


1950s quiz show scandals, Integrity questioned (1957-1958), Dotto
The expansion of the quiz show probe led CBS president Frank Stanton to immediately announce cancellation of three more of its large prize quiz shows between October 16 and October 19, 1959: Top Dollar, The Big Payoff, and Name That Tune, "because of the impossibility of guarding against dishonest practice". The gravity of the scandal was confirmed on November 2 when Van Doren said to the Committee in a nationally televised session that, "I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception. The fact that I, too, was very much deceived cannot keep me from being the principal victim of that deception, because I was its principal symbol."


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Law and politics
All of the regulations regarding television at that time were defined under the Federal Communications Act of 1934, which dealt with the advertising, fair competition, and labeling of broadcast stations. The Act and regulations written by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) were indefinite in regards to fixed television programs. Due to the fact that there were no specific laws regarding the fraudulent behavior in the quiz shows, it is debatable whether the producers or contestants alike did anything illegal. Instead, it could be inferred that the medium was ill-used. After concluding the Harris Commission investigation, Congress amended the Communications Act to prohibit the fixing of televised contests of intellectual knowledge or skill.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Law and politics
Therefore, the bill that President Eisenhower signed into law on September 13, 1960, was a fairly mild improvement to the broadcast industry. The legislation allowed the FCC to require license renewals of less than the legally required three years if the agency believes it would be in the public interest, prohibited gifts to FCC members, and declared illegal any contest or game with intent to deceive the audience. However, at the time, while the actions may have been disreputable, they were not illegal. As a result, no one went to prison for rigging game shows. The individuals who were prosecuted were charged because of attempts to cover up their actions, either by obstruction of justice or perjury.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Hosts and producers
In September 1958, a New York grand jury called producers who had coached contestants to appear in testimony. It was later estimated by a prosecutor on the case that of the 150 sworn witnesses before the panel, only 50 told the truth. Some producers included Barry, Enright and Frank Cooper. Barry and Enright's reputations suffered the most from the scandals as the result of the rigging of Twenty-One. Barry was effectively blacklisted from national television until 1969.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Hosts and producers
Enright went to Canada to continue working in television and was unable to get another job in American television until Barry's own recovery from the scandal allowed him to bring Enright back as a partner in 1975. Although he went through a difficult five-year period (according to an interview with TV Guide before his death in 1984), Barry moved to Los Angeles, eventually finding work on local television.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Hosts and producers
He would later admit in an article in TV Guide that, in order to determine if he still had a bad reputation (because of the requirement to have a license with the FCC), he raised money to buy a Redondo Beach radio station, which is now KDAY. Barry returned to hosting with The Generation Gap in 1969 and had success with The Joker's Wild, which premiered in 1972 and ended in 1975. Barry and Enright resumed their partnership full-time in 1976.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Hosts and producers
Their production of game shows, notably the syndicated revivals of Tic-Tac-Dough (which Barry did not host) and Joker (which he did) in the late 1970s to mid-1980s, resulted in millions of dollars in revenue and, more importantly for both, forgiveness from the public for their involvement in the scandals. Indeed, Barry and Enright were able to sponsor the teen-sex comedy film Private Lessons using revenue from their renewed success.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Hosts and producers
Other producers met the same fate as Barry and Enright, but were unable to redeem themselves afterwards unlike those two. One of the more notable is Cooper, whose Dotto ended up being his longest-running and most popular game. Hosts such as Jack Narz and Hal March continued to work on television after the scandals. March died in January 1970 from lung cancer.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Hosts and producers
Narz, who passed a lie-detector test at the time of the Dotto affair, had an extensive career as a game show host after the incident (which also allowed him to help his brother James, who later took on the name Tom Kennedy, break into the television business), retiring in 1982; he died in October 2008 after suffering two massive strokes. Sonny Fox, the original host of The $64,000 Challenge, left long before it could become tainted and became a popular children's host in the northeast, remembered best as the suave, genial host of the Sunday morning learn-and-laugh marathon Wonderama. (Fox later stated that his unintentional "predilection for asking the answers" was a factor in his decision to only rarely host game shows after the scandals.) Fox's replacement, Ralph Story, went on to become a newscaster for KNXT-TV/KCBS-TV in Los Angeles.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
The quiz show scandals exhibited the necessity for an even stronger network control over programming and production. Quiz show scandals also justified and accelerated the growth of the networks' power over television advertisers concerning licensing, scheduling and sponsorship of programs. The networks claimed to be ignorant and victims of the quiz show scandals. The NBC president at the time stated, "NBC was just as much a victim of the quiz show frauds as was the public." Quiz shows virtually disappeared from prime time American television for decades.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
Those that continued to air had substantially reduced prizes and many shows adopted limits on the number of games a player could win (usually five, the number of programs that could make up one broadcast week). Quiz shows became game shows, shifting focus from knowledge to puzzles and word games. NBC's comedy/game show Jackpot Bowling and ABC's more serious Make That Spare! were the only big-money game shows still on television after the fallout.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
Professional bowlers competed for prizes on these shows and the shows were typically considered sporting programs rather than game shows; Jackpot Bowling was reformatted as a comedy show with Milton Berle as host to shift that show's emphasis in 1960. Those shows continued to air into the early 1960s. The original version of The Price Is Right and CBS's slate of low-budget panel games were largely unaffected by the collapse; those shows would continue to air on network television into the mid-1960s, with The Price Is Right still offering lavish prizes throughout its prime time run.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
A quiz for big money would not return until ABC premiered 100 Grand in 1963; it went off the air after three shows, never awarding its top prize. Quiz shows still held a stigma throughout much of the 1960s, a stigma that was eventually eased by the success of the lower-stakes and fully legitimate answer-and-question game Jeopardy!.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
Which with clue values featured a theoretical limit of $28,320 during the entire run of the original NBC Daytime series, and in theory a champion could win no more than $141,600 in five days, though in reality even the best contestants won less than $12,000 including tournament play.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
It would not be until the late 1960s that five-figure prizes would again be offered on American television, and not until the late 1970s that six-figure prizes could be won; seven-figure prizes were sparingly awarded on The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime (which aired between 1986 and 1987), but would not be fully introduced until August 1999 when Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
premiered, setting off an era of million-dollar game shows including Greed (which premiered in November 1999), The Weakest Link (which premiered in April 2001) and Deal or No Deal (which premiered in December 2005 and became a regular series in March 2006). Australia's short-lived Million Dollar Wheel of Fortune format was adopted to the U.S. version in 2008, and Millionaire ultimately ended its run in syndication in May 2019 after seventeen seasons, after which a new ABC network season premiered in March 2020.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
ABC limited a contestant's winnings to $30,000 (although contestants were retired after winning $20,000) before permanently removing the limit in 1984.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
CBS initially limited a contestant's winnings to $25,000 beginning in 1972; contestants were allowed to keep up to $10,000 in excess of this limit, which would increase to $50,000 in 1984 (after Michael Larson won $110,237 on Press Your Luck by memorizing the game board's light patterns; contestants were now allowed to keep up to $25,000 above that limit and the next one), $75,000 in 1986 (which did not apply to the short-lived Blackout in 1988 due to its maximum total winnings of $54,000) and $125,000 in 1990 (with no money being allowed above that limit) before being permanently eliminated by 2006, when contestants on the current incarnation of The Price Is Right won over $140,000 in both the first and final episodes of the season during Bob Barker's final season; the show has since offered a high-stakes $100,000 pricing game, prizes over $100,000 during themed weeks (Big Money and Dream Car) and has also offered $1,000,000 in primetime specials.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
NBC never utilized a winnings limit on any of its game shows but kept cash and prizes within a reasonable range that created a de facto limit (for instance until its 1989 NBC cancellation, Wheel of Fortune forced contestants to cash in their winnings per round on presented merchandise or apply it to a gift certificate or build their winnings for a later round at the risk of losing those winnings on penalties such as a "Bankrupt" spin). Some syndicated game shows also used a winnings limit: for example, contestants on Jeopardy!


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
were limited to $75,000 in regular play between the start of its current incarnation in 1984 to 1990 (with any excess winnings being donated to a charity of the contestant's choice); after Frank Spangenberg set the winnings record with $102,597, the cap was raised to $100,000, and later to $200,000 in 1997 (before being abolished in 2001 after the clue values were doubled). Jeopardy! 's five-day champions limit was abolished in 2003, allowing for the show to create star contestants; since then, three contestants have won over $1,000,000 in regular play on the show—Ken Jennings, James Holzhauer and Matt Amodio.


1950s quiz show scandals, Aftermath, Television
The demise of the big-money quiz shows also gave rise to television's newest phenomenon: westerns. The disappearance of quiz shows, many of which were (apparent) demonstrations of highbrow intelligence and their replacement by dumbed-down game shows may have been one of many factors in the end of the Golden Age of Television; by 1960, numerous television critics were lamenting the rise of a vast wasteland of lowbrow television.


1950s quiz show scandals, Rigging in other countries, United Kingdom
In 1958, ITV pulled its version of Twenty-One almost immediately after contestant Stanley Armstrong claimed that he had been given "definite leads" to the answers. In 1960, this resulted in the Independent Television Authority's placement of a permanent winnings cap for ITV game shows of £1,000, which the Independent Broadcasting Authority increased to £6,000 in 1981 (though the British version of The $64,000 Question did receive special permission to offer £6,400 when it premiered in 1990). The winnings cap was permanently eliminated by the IBA's successor organization, the Independent Television Commission in 1993.


1950s quiz show scandals, Rigging in other countries, United Kingdom
For many decades, British game shows earned a reputation for being cheap, low-budget affairs that focused more on entertainment than actual game play and prizes, in large part because of the restrictions put on game shows following the scandal.


1950s quiz show scandals, Rigging in other countries, United Kingdom
In addition to prize limits, games of chance were also largely forbidden, meaning that a number of American game shows could not be faithfully reproduced in the U.K. The lifting of these limits initially allowed more American shows to be adapted into British versions and within a few years, the rise of game shows with much higher prize limits — in particular Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? — would originate largely in the U.K. and make its way to the U.S. in the late 1990s.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings
The 1950–1951 Baghdad bombings were a series of bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad, Iraq, between April 1950 and June 1951.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings
There is a controversy around the true identity and objective of the culprits behind the bombings, and the issue remains unresolved.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings
Two activists in the Iraqi Zionist underground were found guilty by an Iraqi court for a number of the bombings, and were sentenced to death. Another was sentenced to life imprisonment and seventeen more were given long prison sentences. The allegations against Israeli agents had "wide consensus" amongst Iraqi Jews in Israel. Many of the Iraqi Jews in Israel who lived in poor conditions blamed their ills and misfortunes on the Israeli Zionist emissaries or Iraqi Zionist underground movement.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings
The theory that "certain Jews" carried out the attacks "in order to focus the attention of the Israel Government on the plight of the Jews" was viewed as "more plausible than most" by the British Foreign Office. Telegrams between the Mossad agents in Baghdad and their superiors in Tel Aviv give the impression that neither group knew who was responsible for the attack.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings
Israeli involvement has been consistently denied by the Israeli government, including by a Mossad-led internal inquiry, even following the 2005 admission of the Lavon affair.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings
Those who assign responsibility for the bombings to an Israeli or Iraqi Zionist underground movement suggest the motive was to encourage Iraqi Jews to immigrate to Israel, as part of the ongoing Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings
Those historians who have raised questions regarding the guilt of the convicted Iraqi Zionist agents with respect to the bombings note that by 13 January 1951, nearly 86,000 Jews had already registered to immigrate, and 23,000 had already left for Israel, that the British who were closely monitoring the Jewish street did not even mention the bombs of April and June 1950, nor were they mentioned in the Iraqi trials, meaning these were minor events.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings
They have raised other possible culprits such as a nationalist Iraqi Christian army officer,  and those who have raised doubt regarding Israeli involvement claimed that it is highly unlikely the Israelis would have taken such measures to accelerate the Jewish evacuation given that they were already struggling to cope with the existing level of Jewish immigration.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Background
Before the exodus of Jews to Israel, there were about 140,000 Iraqi Jews. Most lived in Baghdad, of which Jews made up a sixth of the city's population. High Jewish populations also existed in the towns of Basra and Mosul.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Background
Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and most historically significant Jewish communities. By 1936, there was an increased sense of insecurity among the Jews of Iraq. In 1941 after the government of pro-Nazi Rashid Ali was defeated, his soldiers and policemen, aided by the Arab mob, started the Farhud ("violent dispossession"). A government commission later reported that at least 180 Jews had been killed and 240 wounded, 586 Jewish businesses pillaged, and 99 Jewish homes burned. Jewish sources claimed much higher casualties.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Background
In the summer of 1948, following the declaration of the State of Israel, the Iraqi government declared Zionism a capital offense and fired Jews in government positions. In his autobiography, Sasson Somekh, a Baghdadi Jew, wrote:


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Background
Emigration until 1946 or 1947 was infrequent, despite the growing feeling among Iraqi Jews that their days in the Land of the Two Rivers were numbered. By the time war broke out in Palestine in 1948, many civil servants had been dismissed from their governmental jobs. Commerce had declined considerably, and the memory of the Farhud, which had meanwhile faded, returned.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Background
At this time, he writes, "hundreds of Jews... were sentenced by military courts to long prison sentences for Zionist and Communist activity, both real and imagined. Some of the Baghdadi Jews who supported the Zionist movement began to steal across the border to Iran, from where they were flown to Israel."


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Background
Elie Kedourie writes that after the 1948 show trial of Shafiq Ades, a respected Jewish businessman, who was publicly hanged in Basra, Iraq Jews realized they were no longer under the protection of the law and there was little difference between the mob and Iraqi court justice.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Background
The immigration to Israel was banned Since 1948, and by 1949, the Iraqi Zionist underground was smuggling Iraqi Jews out of the country at the rate of 1,000 a month. In March 1950, Iraq passed a law which temporarily allowed immigration to Israel, limited to one year only, and stripping Jews who emigrated of their Iraqi citizenship. The law was motivated by economic considerations (the property of departing Jews reverted to the state treasury) and a sense that Jews were a potentially troublesome minority that the country would be better off without.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Background
At first, few would register, as the Zionist movement suggested they not do so until property issues had been clarified. After mounting pressure from both Jews and the Government, the movement relented and agreed to registrations. Israel was initially reluctant to absorb so many immigrants, (Hillel, 1987) but in March 1951 organized Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, an airlift to Israel, and sent in emissaries to encourage Jews to leave.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Background
In April 1950, an activist of Mossad LeAliyah Bet, Shlomo Hillel, using the alias Richard Armstrong, flew from Amsterdam to Baghdad as a representative of the American charter company Near East Air Transport, to organize an airlift of Iraq Jews to Israel via Cyprus. Earlier, Hillel had trained Zionist militants in Baghdad under the alias Fuad Salah. Near East Air Transport was owned by the Jewish Agency. The first flight of "Near east airlines" with immigrating Iraqi Jews arrived at Israel on 20 May 1950, when 46000 Jews already registered under the De-naturalization law.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Background
Israel could not cope with so many immigrants and limited the rate of the flights from Iraq. by early January 1951, the number of Jews who registered to leave was up to 86,000, only about 23,000 of whom had left.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Background
According to Adam Shatz, the Mossad had been promoting Jewish emigration since 1941 and used stories of Jewish mistreatment to encourage the Jews to leave. Nuri al-Said had warned the Jewish community of Baghdad to accelerate their flights out of the country, otherwise, he would take the Jews to the Borders himself. Nuri al-Said's threats encouraged Iraqi officials to abuse the departing Jews before they boarded the planes and to destroy their baggage.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Bombing incidents
According to the Baghdad police who gave evidence at the trial, the weapon used was a British-made World War II hand grenade "No. 36". Between April 1950.-June 1951 several explosions had occurred in Baghdad:


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Trial
The pro-Western Iraqi government of Faisal II and Nuri al-Said prosecuted the alleged Jewish perpetrators in court, in a trial which began in October 1951. Two confirmed activists in the Zionist underground, Shalom Salah Shalom, a 19-year-old weapons expert, and Yosef Ibrahim Basri, a lawyer active in collecting intelligence material, were executed after being convicted of the bombings. Whilst their involvement in the underground movement and holdings of weapons caches were not disputed, both denied involvement in the bombings.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Trial
Salah's testimony under torture indirectly allowed the Iraqi police to find large weapons caches of the Zionist underground in three synagogues (Mas'uda Shemtov, Hakham Haskal and Meir Tuweik) and in private homes, including 436 hand-grenades, 33 machine-guns, 97 machine-gun cartridges, 186 pistols. Shlomo Hillel, also once a member of the Iraqi Zionist underground, noted that the last words of the executed defendants were "Long live the State of Israel". The British Foreign Office noted in a file note "Trial of Jews at Baghdad, 20 December 1951" that they had "no reason to suppose that the trials were conducted in anything but a normal manner".


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Trial
Baghdad police officers who gave evidence at the trial appear to have been convinced that the crimes were committed by Jewish agents, claiming that "anyone studying the affair closely will see that the perpetrator did not intend to cause loss of life among the Jews" and that each grenade was "thrown in non-central locations and there was no intention to kill or injure a certain person".


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Trial
Historian Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, in her book, Zionism in an Arab Country: Jews in Iraq in the 1940s states that the charges in the Iraqi trial were "groundless for several reasons," because many thousands of Iraqi Jews had already registered to leave by the time of the later bombings, and the charges related only to these later bombings.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings
There has been debate over whether the bombs were in fact planted by the Mossad or the Iraqi Zionist underground in order to encourage Iraqi Jews to immigrate to the newly created state of Israel or whether they were the work of Arab anti-Jewish extremists in Iraq. The issue has been the subject of lawsuits and inquiries in Israel.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings
The true identity and objective of the culprits behind the bombings has been the subject of controversy. A secret Israeli inquiry in 1960 found no evidence that they were ordered by Israel or any motive that would have explained the attack, though it did find out that most of the witnesses believed that Jews had been responsible for the bombings. The issue remains unresolved: Iraqi activists still regularly charge that Israel used violence to engineer the exodus, while Israeli officials of the time vehemently deny it. Historian Moshe Gat reports that "the belief that the bombs had been thrown by Zionist agents was shared by those Iraqi Jews who had just reached Israel". Sociologist Phillip Mendes backs Gat's claims, and further attributes the allegations to have been influenced and distorted by feelings of discrimination.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
Historian Abbas Shiblak, Iraqi Jew Naeim Giladi and CIA agent Wilbur Crane Eveland have argued that Jews were involved in the bombings.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
In 1949, Zionist emissary Yudka Rabinowitz complained that the complacency of the Iraqi Jews was "hampering our existence" and proposed to the Mossad "throwing several hand-grenades for intimidation into cafes with a largely Jewish clientele, as well as leaflets threatening the Jews and demanding their expulsion from Berman", using the code name for Iraq. The Mossad forbade him to conduct negotiations about or carry out any acts of terror, an order which he reported that he had "confirmed and accepted".


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
According to Moshe Gat, as well as Meir-Glitzenstein, Samuel Klausner, Rayyan Al-Shawaf and Yehouda Shenhav, there is "wide consensus among Iraqi Jews that the emissaries threw the bombs in order to hasten the Jews' departure from Iraq". Shenhav noted an Israeli Foreign Ministry memo which stated that Iraqi Jews reacted to the hangings of Salah and Basri with the attitude: "That is God's revenge on the movement that brought us to such depths."


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
The British Embassy in Baghdad assessed that the bombings were carried out by Zionist activists trying to highlight the danger to Iraqi Jews, in order influence the State of Israel to accelerate the pace of Jewish emigration. Another possible explanation offered by the embassy was that bombs were meant to change the minds of well-off Jews who wished to stay in Iraq.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
In a 1954 operation by Israeli military intelligence, known as the Lavon Affair after the defence minister Pinchas Lavon, a group of Zionist Egyptian Jews attempted to plant bombs in a US Information Service library, and in a number of American targets in Cairo and Alexandria.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
According to Teveth, they were hoping that the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, 'unspecified malcontents' or 'local nationalists' would be blamed for their actions and this would undermine Western confidence in the existing Egyptian regime by generating public insecurity and actions to bring about arrests, demonstrations, and acts of revenge, while totally concealing the Israeli factor. The operation failed, the perpetrators were arrested by Egyptian police and brought to justice, two were sentenced to death, several to long term imprisonment.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
The Israeli government has denied any link to the Baghdad bombings, and blamed Iraqi nationalists for the attacks on the Iraqi Jews. However, according to Shalom Cohen, when the Lavon affair broke in Israel, Lavon remarked, "This method of operating was not invented for Egypt. It was tried before in Iraq."


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
The Iraqi Jewish anti-Zionist author Naeim Giladi maintains that the bombings were "perpetrated by Zionist agents in order to cause fear amongst the Jews, and so promote their exodus to Israel." This theory is shared by Uri Avnery, who wrote in My friend, the enemy that "After the disclosure of the Lavon Affair... the Baghdad affair became more plausible" and Marion Wolfsohn.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
Palestinian historian Abbas Shiblak believes that the attacks were committed by Zionist activists and that the attacks were the pre-eminent reason for the subsequent exodus of Iraqi Jews to Israel. Shiblak also argues that the attacks were an attempt to sour Iraq-American relations, saying "The March 1951 attack on the US Information Centre was probably an attempt to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to gain more support for the Zionist cause in the United States".


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
According to Gat, Avnery wrote "without checking the facts...Marion Woolfson ... goes on to distort the dates of the explosions and the number of registrees, in order to prove her contention...Avnery’s article and Marion Woolfson’s book served as the basis for the arguments of the Palestinian author Abbas Shiblak".


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
Giladi claims that it is also supported by Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in his book Ropes of Sand. According to Eveland, whose information was presumably based on the Iraqi official investigation, which was shared with the US embassy, "In an attempt to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs in the U.S. Information Service library and in the synagogues. Soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel... most of the world believed reports that Arab terrorism had motivated the flight of the Iraqi Jews whom the Zionists had 'rescued' really just in order to increase Israel’s Jewish population."


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
Shimon Mendes wrote in Ha'aretz that: "Someone had to act, and he took the appropriate action at the right time. For only an act like the explosions would have brought them to Israel. Anyone who understood politics and developments in Israel was long aware of that."


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims for Israeli or Iraqi Zionist involvement
Yehuda Tajar, who spent ten years in Iraqi prison for his alleged involvement in the bombings, was interviewed in Arthur Neslen's 2006 book "Occupied Minds". According to Tajar, the widow of one of the Jewish activists, Yosef Beit-Halahmi, implied he had organized attacks after his colleagues were arrested for the Masuda Shemtov synagogue bombing, to prove that those on trial were not the perpetrators.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims of no Israeli involvement, Moshe Gat's analysis
According to historian Moshe Gat, "not only did Israeli emissaries not place the bombs at the locations cited in the Iraqi statement, but also that there was in fact no need to take such drastic action in order to urge the Jews to leave Iraq for Israel".


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims of no Israeli involvement, Moshe Gat's analysis
Gat suggests the perpetrators could have been members of the anti-Jewish Istiqlal Party. Yehuda Tajar, one of the alleged bombers, said the bombing were carried out by the Muslim Brotherhood.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims of no Israeli involvement, Moshe Gat's analysis
According to Gat, "The British Foreign Office, which could hardly be suspected of proZionist tendencies, never stated explicitly that it was the defendants who had thrown the bombs" and "US Embassy reports also cast considerable doubt as to whether the two men convicted were in fact guilty of throwing the bombs. ".


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims of no Israeli involvement, Other claims of no Israeli involvement
Mordechai Ben Porat, founder and chair of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, who was coordinating Jewish emigration at the time, was accused of orchestrating a bombing campaign to speed up the Jewish exodus from Iraq by Israeli journalist Baruch Nadel in 1977. Ben Porat sued the journalist for libel, ending in an out-of-court compromise, where Nadel retracted all the accusations against the Israeli emissaries, and apologized


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Responsibility for the bombings, Claims of no Israeli involvement, Other claims of no Israeli involvement
In his 1996 book "To Baghdad and Back," Ben-Porat published the full report of a 1960 investigation committee appointed by David Ben-Gurion, which "did not find any factual proof that the bombs were hurled by any Jewish organization or individual" and was "convinced that no entity in Israel gave an order to perpetrate such acts of sabotage."


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Effects on Iraqi Jewish emigration
In March 1950 the government of Iraq passed the Denaturalisation Act that allowed Jews to emigrate if they renounced their Iraqi citizenship. Iraqi prime minister Tawfiq al-Suwaidi expected that 7,000–10,000 Jews out of the Iraqi Jewish population of 125,000 would leave. A few thousand Jews registered for the offer before the first bombing occurred. The first bombing occurred on the last day of Passover, 8 April 1950. Panic in the Jewish community ensued and many more Jews registered to leave Iraq.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Effects on Iraqi Jewish emigration
The law expired in March 1951 but was extended after the Iraqi government froze the assets of departing Jews, including those who had already left. Between the first and last bombing almost the entire Jewish community bar a few thousand had registered to leave the country. The emigration of Jews was also due to the deteriorating status of Jews in Iraq since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war as they were suspected of being disloyal to Iraq. They were treated with threats, suspicion and physical assaults and were portrayed by the media as a fifth column.


1950–1951 Baghdad bombings, Effects on Iraqi Jewish emigration
By 1953, nearly all Jews had left the country. In his memoir of Jewish life in Baghdad, Sasson Somekh writes: "The pace of registration for the citizenship waiver was slow in the beginning, but it increased as tensions rose between Jews and their neighbors and after acts of terror were perpetrated against Jewish businesses and institutions – especially the Mas'uda Shem-Tov Synagogue... This was the place to which emigrating citizens were required to report with their luggage before leaving for Israel."


1950–51 1re série season
The 1950–51 1re série season was the 30th season of the 1re série, the top level of ice hockey in France. Five teams participated in the league, and Racing Club de France won their second championship.


1950–51 A.C. Milan season
During 1950-51 season Associazione Calcio Milan competed in Serie A and Latin Cup.


1950–51 A.C. Milan season, Summary
In season 1950-1951 Milan conquered the title of Italian champion (from 1925 also known as scudetto) after 44 years. In effective number of championships were 36 due to 1908 season the club not playing in, and suspended seasons during World Wars (1915-1919 and 1943-1945). The rossoneri did not win any trophy since 1918: Coppa Mauro (a non-competitive Inter-War tournament ) that means a long period of 33 years. This league was the first title since 1929-1930 season when it was introduced the sole group competition format.


1950–51 A.C. Milan season, Summary
Crutial to clinch this trophy was the three swedish players known as Gre-No-Li introduced to the calcio last season. Also important were the captain Andrea Bonomi, goalkeeper Lorenzo Buffon, Arturo Silvestri (arrived in the summer from Modena), Carlo Annovazzi, Omero Tognon, Benigno De Grandi, Renzo Burini and Mario Renosto. The manager was Lajos Czeizler supported by technical director Antonio Busini. The team started the tournament with 6 wins in a row. The rossoneri competed hardly against Juventus and Inter (Neroazzurri defeated the club the first derby of the season ) in an incredible offensive season where Milan, Juventus and Inter scored more than 100 goals the rossoneri finally won the championship thanks to lost only 4 games.


1950–51 A.C. Milan season, Summary
Also, in June 1951 the club won the Latin Cup, the most important competition in Europe. In semifinals the Diavoli won 4-1 against Atlético Madrid thanks to a hat-trick of Renosto and 1 goal of Nordahl. In Final against Lille the team won 5-0 with a hat-trick of Nordahl included and two goals of Burini and Annovazzi. Milan won its first international trophy.


1950–51 A.C. Milan season, Squad
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.


1950–51 AHL season
The 1950–51 AHL season was the 15th season of the American Hockey League. Ten teams were scheduled to play 70 games each, however the New Haven Eagles folded midseason. The Cleveland Barons won their eighth F. G. "Teddy" Oke Trophy as West Division champions, and their fifth Calder Cup as league champions.


1950–51 AHL season, Final standings
Note: GP = Games played; W = Wins; L = Losses; T = Ties; GF = Goals for; GA = Goals against; Pts = Points;


1950–51 AHL season, Scoring leaders
Note: GP = Games played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points; PIM = Penalty minutes


1950–51 Aberdeen F.C. season
The 1950–51 season was Aberdeen's 39th season in the top flight of Scottish football and their 41st season overall. Aberdeen competed in the Scottish League Division One, Scottish League Cup, and the Scottish Cup.


1950–51 Al Ahly SC season
In the 1950–51 season, Al Ahly won the double, by winning the league for the third consecutive time despite the strong competition with Zamalek, Then the Red Giants completed the double with a difficult victory in the Egyptian Cup final against El Sekka El Hadid.


1950–51 Al Ahly SC season, Competitions, Egyptian Premier League, League table
(C)= Champions, Pld = Matches played; W = Matches won; D = Matches drawn; L = Matches lost; F = Goals for; A = Goals against; ± = Goal difference; Pts = Points.


1950–51 Allsvenskan, Overview
The league was contested by 12 teams, with Malmö FF winning the championship.


1950–51 Allsvenskan (men's handball)
The 1950–51 Allsvenskan was the 17th season of the top division of Swedish handball. 10 teams competed in the league. Örebro SK won the league, but the title of Swedish Champions was awarded to the winner of Svenska mästerskapet. Västerås IK and IFK Malmö were relegated.


1950–51 American Soccer League
This is the current revision of this page, as edited by Frietjes (talk | contribs) at 15:03, 14 March 2020. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this version.


1950–51 Arsenal F.C. season
The 1950–51 season was Arsenal's 31st consecutive season in the top division of English football.


1950–51 Arsenal F.C. season, Results, FA Cup
Arsenal entered the FA Cup in the third round, in which they were drawn to face Carlisle United.


1950–51 Ashes series
The 1950–51 Ashes series consisted of five cricket Test matches, each of six days with five hours play each day and eight ball overs. It formed part of the MCC tour of Australia in 1950–51 and the matches outside the Tests were played in the name of the Marylebone Cricket Club. The England team under the captaincy of the big-hearted all-rounder Freddie Brown was regarded as the weakest sent to Australia and "without Bedser and Hutton, England would have been little better than a club side".


1950–51 Ashes series
Few gave them a chance of regaining the Ashes and they lost the series 4–1 to Lindsay Hassett's Australian team, which had far greater reserves of talent. In the Fifth and final Test England beat Australia for the first time since 1938 and ended their unbeaten run of 14 Tests against England, 26 Tests against all teams and 96 games in all cricket since the Second World War. After this victory England would defeat Australia in 1953, 1954–55 and 1956.