The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, Earth's first artificial satellite, opening the Space Age.
A nationwide uprising against Hungary's Soviet-backed government is crushed by Soviet forces.
Delegates from 29 Asian and African nations meet in Bandung to promote Afro-Asian cooperation and oppose colonialism, a forerunner of the Non-Aligned Movement.
A conflict between North Vietnam and the Viet Cong on one side and South Vietnam, backed by the United States and its allies, on the other; it ends with the fall of Saigon in 1975.
The Geneva Conference ends the First Indochina War, temporarily partitioning Vietnam at the 17th parallel pending elections planned for 1956.
Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela found the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries at the Baghdad Conference.
Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union since the mid-1920s, dies near Moscow, opening the way to de-Stalinisation under Khrushchev.