Iconic ‘napalm girl’ photo turns 50 today: ‘Photographer saved my life’

June 8, 1972. 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc is playing with other children at the temple in the South Vietnamese village of Trảng Bàng, about 45 kilometers northwest of Saigon. Suddenly she hears the deafening noise of an airplane. Then explosions and smoke. Unbearable pain. Kim runs away, but she can’t avoid the napalm. Today Kim Phuc has been known all over the world as the “Napalm Girl” for fifty years. Because of that one iconic photo that photographer Nick Ut took of her.