Buddhist priest self-immolates in South Vietnam, June 11, 1963
South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem’s great desire is to convert his country to Catholicism, and vital to that effort is the systematic subjugation of the country’s Buddhist majority. His forces have even fired upon unarmed Buddhist protestors. Now, a seventy-three-year-old Buddhist monk, Thích Quang Duc, sits on a crowded Saigon thoroughfare. He assumes the lotus position, while a fellow protestor pours five gallons of gasoline over his head. He has chosen to protest the government crackdown by burning himself to death. It is the beginning of the end for those who hold power in Saigon.