Aerial view of the “Viracocha III”, a boat made only from the totora reed, as it is being prepared to cross the Pacific from Chile to Australia on an expected six-month journey, La Paz, Bolivia, October 19, 2016. An expedition in a boat made only of reeds crafted by indigenous Bolivians is getting ready to cross the Pacific from South America to Australia, in a fresh attempt to prove that ancient mariners were capable of making the journey. (Photo by David Mercado/Reuters)

Looking for a reason to visit the Philippines? This mermaid school should do the trick. No, seriously, there’s an actual school that will teach you how to be a mermaid. It’s called the Philippines Mermaid Swimming Academy. (Photo by Philippine Mermaid Swimming Academy/Exclusivepix Media)

Devotees of the small farming village of Bibiclat celebrate the Feast of Saint John the Baptist while covered in banana leaves and mud on June 24, 2025 in Aliaga, Philippines. Known as the “Taong Putik” (mud people), the ritual happens yearly in this small farming village as their own version of expressing their faith and celebrating the feast of Saint John the Baptist whom the survivors of the Japanese occupation in 1944 in their area prayed to for rain to save their fellow villagers. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

In this photograph taken on January 29, 2017, Afghan members of a wushu martial arts group led by trainer Sima Azimi (C), 20, pose for a photograph at the Shahrak Haji Nabi hilltop overlooking Kabul. Afghanistan's first female wushu trainer, Sima Azimi, 20, is training 20 Afghan girls aged between 14 – 20 at a wushu club in Kabul, after learning the sport while living as a refugee in Iran. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP Photo)

The student Patricia Vasconcellos de Almeida, 22, tried to kiss one of the military police who formed a cordon ostensibly in front of the building Fetranspor (Federation of Transport Companies), in Rio de Janeiro, on June 27, 2013. (Photo by Zulmair Rocha/UOL)

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)

Pedestrians cover their face as they walk along the dusty road in Kathmandu, Nepal February 27, 2017. Nepal has forced 2,500 old vehicles off roads in its capital city of Kathmandu, part of a fight against alarming air pollution levels that have hit nine times World Health Organisation (WHO) limits. Air pollution has been a chronic problem in rapidly growing Kathmandu, which sits in a Himalayan valley and is home to more than 3mn people. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

Garbage pickers collect ride on donkey cart while looking for recyclable materials at a rubbish dump in the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq, August 23, 2016. Despite its huge untapped oil and gas reserves and steadily rising oil output and revenue, 23 percent of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Planning. (Photo by Khalid al Mousily/Reuters)