In the spring of 1965, within weeks of 3,500 American Marines arriving in Vietnam, a 39-year-old Briton named Larry Burrows began work on a feature for LIFE magazine, chronicling the day-to-day experience of U.S. troops on the ground – and in the air – in the midst of the rapidly widening war. The photographs in this gallery focus on a calamitous March 31, 1965, helicopter mission; Burrows’ “report from Da Nang”, featuring his pictures and his personal account of the harrowing operation, was published two weeks later as a now-famous cover story in the April 16, 1965, issue of LIFE.

Photo: Man your battle stations: The crew chief of helicopter Yankee Papa 13, lance corporal James C. Farley, mans an M-60 machine gun during a mission near Da Nang, Vietnam on March 31, 1965. (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures)

Baghdad-based artist Othman Toma uses multi-colored melting treats as a medium for his art, instead of normal paint. And it works incredibly well. In fact, to the untrained eye, his artworks seem painted with regular watercolors.

In Canada, a small sea lion seems very narcissistic, put on a variety of expressions and gestures to the camera, self-shot was exhilaration, it does not know the photographer Jon Cornforth next to it quietly photographed its body posture.

It would seem to be something you'd see only in a cartoon or at a Phish concert, but according to park rangers in New South Wales, Australia, dozens of giant, fluorescent pink slugs have been popping up on a mountaintop there. The eight-inch creatures have been spotted only on Mount Kaputar, a 5,000-foot peak in the Nandewar Range in northern New South Wales. Scientists believe the eye-catching organisms are survivors from an era when Australia was home to rainforests. A series of volcanoes, millions of years of erosion and other geological changes “have carved a dramatic landscape at Mount Kaputar”, the park service wrote on its Facebook page, and unique arid conditions spared the slugs from extinction. (Photo by Michael Murphy/AFP Photo/NSW Environment Office)

Today is what is known as the equilux and it happens when day and night are equal and occurs a few days before the spring equinox, and a few days after the autumn equinox. What appears to be a floating leaf is actually a stray sticking to a wet car windshield in a park in Scaggsville, Maryland on September 25, 2024. Today sunrise was at 7:02am and sunset took place at 7:02pm. The green and orange colored leaf (about half for each color) seems to represent the transition from Summer to Fall. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Street artist JR poses in front the Louvre Pyramid in Paris, Tuesday, May 24, 2016. For his latest bold project, street artist JR is creating an eye-tricking installation at the Louvre Museum that makes it seem as if the huge glass pyramid at the heart of the courtyard has disappeared. (Photo by Francois Mori/AP Photo)