The Geneva Conference ends the First Indochina War, temporarily partitioning Vietnam at the 17th parallel pending elections planned for 1956.
During the 300-day free-movement period after the Geneva Accords, roughly 800,000 to one million people, many of them Catholics, move from North to South Vietnam.
The Việt Minh assault the French garrison at Điện Biên Phủ; their victory on 7 May leads to the Geneva Accords.
The Vietnam People's Army takes control of Hanoi as French forces withdraw under the Geneva Accords.
The National Liberation Front (FLN) fights French rule; the war ends with the Évian Accords and Algerian independence in 1962.
A land reform campaign in the North redistributes land, accompanied by many executions; the government later acknowledges errors and launches a rectification in 1956.
Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union since the mid-1920s, dies near Moscow, opening the way to de-Stalinisation under Khrushchev.