The Rio de Janeiro Olympics kick off on August 5 for some two weeks of competitive games drawing athletes as well as audiences from around the world. As they prepare to cover the event, Reuters photographers look back on their favourite pictures from past Olympics where they captured the action on the ground as well as the participants' tears and joy that followed. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

MTV's “Ex On The Beach” star Jemma Lucy gives her neighbours an eyeful as she takes her bins out in her underwear in Manchester, UK on August 22, 2016. Jemma Lucy is well known in UK for her love of flashing more than a little bit of flesh on a night out. But the reality star took things a step further this week as she took out the bins wearing nothing but her bra and knickers. (Photo by XposurePhotos.com)

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)

The Rafflesia Arnoldi flower (Amarphophallus titanum) which has been cultivated is seen in Palupuah Village, Agam District, West Sumatra, Indonesia, on April 13, 2022. The West Sumatera Nature Conservation Agency (BKSDA) estimates around seven Rafflesia Arnoldi flowers will bloom in Palupuah Village this year. (Photo by Adi Prima/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A fuzzy caterpillar on a basil plant in west Bengal, India on December 25, 2023. The caterpillar’s defence system is its hair, which has microscopic barbs that break off easily in the skin of would-be predators. (Photo by Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

The strength of a weaver ant carrying fruit in Indonesia in the last decade of August 2024 is equivalent to the average man or woman picking up a minibus. (Photo by Ridho Arifuddin/Solent News)

Sultan, a famous captive fennec that is displayed tied on a rope in front of a tourist shop, is the main attraction in the souk of Douz, a desert town in Tunisia. By the display of such a charismatic animal, tourists are often lured to buy things or pay for pictures. On inquiry, although Sultan has been caught as a pup in the wild, the owners of the shop reassure the foreigners stating that the animal is ‘domestic’. (Photo by Bruno D’Amicis/Fritz Pölking Prize/GDT EWPY 2015)

A Bugattie Zero 400 Zero is pictured during opening of the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, Germany September 11, 2017. (Photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)