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or you can get all of History Daily plus other fantastic history podcasts at into History.com. It's the morning of June 11th, 1963 in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam.

32-year-old reporter Malcolm Brown steps back onto the sidewalk as hundreds of

Buddhist monks and nuns walk down the center of the road.

Traffic grinds to a halt as the orange-robed crowd blocks an entire intersection, chanting and banging drums.

Malcolm feels a fiz of anticipation in the air.

Not for the first time, a crisis is brewing in this fractious young country.

Nine years ago, when France gave up its colonies in Southeast Asia, Vietnam was divided into two states,

capitalist South Vietnam and communist North Vietnam.

The two countries almost immediately declared war on each other and they've been engaged in a struggle for supremacy ever since.

But South Vietnam's government isn't just fighting an external enemy.

It also faces opposition for many of its own people.

Despite Buddhism being the country's majority religion, the Catholic-led regime is suppressing the right to worship,

and that's making many Buddhists angry.

Yesterday, Malcolm got a tip that a Buddhist protest was going to take place in Central Saigon, and he's here to pick up the story.

A hush settles over the crowd as an elderly monk emerges from the procession and sits cross-legged on the road.

Sensing that something newsworthy is about to happen, Malcolm reaches into his pocket and takes

out a cheap camera.

While Malcolm checks to make sure there's film loaded, one of the younger monks picks up a can of gasoline

and empties it over the elderly monk's head.

...