What Day Was the fall of Saigon?

About this date

North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, prompting the South Vietnamese government's surrender and marking the effective end of the Vietnam War.

The event is remembered partly for the chaotic US evacuation of American personnel and South Vietnamese allies by helicopter from the US embassy roof and other sites in the city's final hours.

Saigon was subsequently renamed Ho Chi Minh City, after the late North Vietnamese leader, and the country was formally reunified under Communist rule the following year.

Operation Frequent Wind, the codename for the US evacuation, remains one of the largest helicopter evacuations in history, airlifting thousands of people from the city in its final hours.

Refugees who fled Vietnam by sea in the years following this event became widely known as the "boat people," a mass migration that resettled hundreds of thousands of people across numerous countries over the following decade.