Nine years ago, Tom Carter traveled from San Francisco to China, responding to a job posting that turned out to be a scam. He managed to find another job as a teacher, and saved enough money to embark on a 56,000 km trip through all of China's 33 provinces that lasted two years. Carrying a camera – just a a 4-megapixel point-and-shoot – Carter captured some amazing images of the widely varying landscape, people, and architecture across the nation. Photo: Buddhist pilgrim family from Sichuan. (Photo by Tom Carter via The Atlantic)

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)

A giant sinkhole in Guatemala City, on May 31, 2010. More than 94,000 were evacuated as the storm buried homes under mud, swept away a highway bridge near Guatemala City and opened up several sinkholes in the capital. (Photo by Casa Presidencial/Reuters via The Atlantic)

Three very colouful alpacas enjoy the hot weather at Toft Farm, Rugby, on July 19, 2013. (Photo by Caters News)

A Lion-Tailed macaque holds a big block of ice with a mix of frozen vegetables and fruit at the zoo in Leipzig, central Germany, Friday, July 19, 2013. Weather forecasts predict sunny weather and warm temperatures for Germany in the next few days. (Photo by Jens Meyer/AP Photo)

A man is silhouetted as he stands on a walkway in the sky lobby at the Chancellery, the seat of German Chancellor Angela Merkel (not pictured) in Berlin, May 7, 2014. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Participants take part in a high-heel race at a Gay Pride party in the central neighborhood of Chueca in Madrid on July 3, 2014. (Photo by Gerard Julien/AFP Photo)

Performers wearing 19th century French military uniforms fire their weapons as they attack Allied forces during a reenactment of the Battle of the Nations, in a field in the village of Markkleeberg near Leipzig October 20, 2013. The east German city of Leipzig commemorated the 200th anniversary of the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars on Sunday by reenacting the Battle of the Nations, with 6,000 military-historic association enthusiasts from all over Europe. The decisive encounter in which tens of thousands of soldiers were killed, took place from October 17-19, 1813, just outside of Leipzig. At the height of the hostilities Napoleon fielded more than 200,000 men against an Allied force of some 360,000 soldiers which included troops from Russia, Austria, Prussia and Sweden. (Photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)