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This Happened

This Happened — February 1: The Saigon Execution

On this day in 1968, Nguyễn Văn Lém, a member of the Viet Cong, was summarily executed for alleged war crimes in Saigon during the Vietnam War. An Associated Press photographer captured the execution in one of the most iconic images in war reporting history.

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Who witnessed the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém?

When Nguyễn Văn Lém, a member of the Viet Cong, was summarily executed for alleged war crimes in Saigon during the Vietnam War, Võ Sửu, a cameraman for the U.S. TV network NBC, and Eddie Adams, an Associated Press photographer were there to witness and capture the event.

How did Eddie Adams photograph the execution?

Adams has said that at the time, he believed that Brigadier General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, Chief of the Republic of Vietnam National Police, was just going to threaten Lém, and took out his camera to record the event. The photograph he captured showed the moment the bullet entered Lém's head.

What happened to the Saigon execution photograph?

After being shared worldwide, the photograph electrified the anti-war movement in the United States. The photograph became famous in contemporary American journalism, and won Adams the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography.

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Society

Why Every New Parent Should Travel Alone — Without Their Children

Argentine journalist Ignacio Pereyra travels to Italy alone to do some paperwork as his family stays behind. While he walks alone around Rome, he experiences mixed feelings: freedom, homesickness and nostalgia, and wonders what leads people to desire larger families.

Photo of a man sitting donw with his luggage at Athens' airport

Alone at Athens' international airport

Ignacio Pereyra

I realize it in the morning before leaving: I feel a certain level of excitement about traveling. It feels like enthusiasm, although it is confusing. I will go from Athens to Naples to see if I can finish the process for my Italian citizenship, which I started five years ago.

I started the process shortly after we left Buenos Aires, when my partner Irene and I had been married for two years and the idea of having children was on the vague but near horizon.

Now there are four of us and we have been living in Greece for more than two years. We arrived here in the middle of the pandemic, which left a mark on our lives, as in the lives of most of the people I know.

But now it is Sunday morning. I tell Lorenzo, my four-year-old son, that I am leaving for a few days: “No, no, Dad. You can’t go. Otherwise I’ll throw you into the sea.”

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