When North Vietnam's tanks smashed through the gates of Saigon's presidential palace 40 years ago, it heralded the end of nearly two decades of war, a humiliating defeat for the United States and reunification with the South.

Here is a timeline of events in the lead-up to the Vietnam War and the taking of Saigon by Northern forces.

A copy of a deeply moving pilot's log, written during the top-secret Enola Gay mission that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, was auctioned in New York on Wednesday for $50,000.

Robert Lewis, American co-pilot of the B-29 bomber, made the copy in 1945 at the request of the then-science editor at The New York Times, and it includes a pencil sketch of the mushroom cloud, Bonhams auction house said.

Munich will open a museum on the former site of the Nazi party headquarters Thursday, in a long overdue reckoning with the German city's status as the "home of the movement".

The inauguration coincides with the 70th anniversary of the "liberation" of Munich by U.S. troops at the end of World War II, and of Adolf Hitler's suicide the same day in a Berlin bunker.

The middle of a desert is not the kind of place you'd expect to be able to sit down with a good book, watch a movie or surf the Internet.

But that is exactly what children who have fled the deadly conflict in Syria are now able to do at Azraq refugee camp in Jordan.

The results are in of a battle that pitted London's culture vultures against a Chinese workshop churning out replicas of the world's most famous paintings, revealing a clear victory for the cut-price masters.

For nearly three months, visitors to London's Dulwich Picture Gallery have pored over 270 paintings in its permanent collection, including works by Rembrandt, Rubens and Gainsborough, knowing that there was one $120 (109-euro) fake in their midst.

"Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own" (Crown), by Kate Bolick

Even its opening lines are provocative: "Whom to marry, and when it will happen — these two questions define every woman's existence, regardless of where she was raised or what religion she does or doesn't practice ... Men have their own problems; this isn't one of them."

"Every year it's the same circus," mutters a resident at the sight of dozens of anti-fascist protesters stomping toward a large weatherworn building in the small northern Austrian town Braunau am Inn.

"Nazis out!" chant the demonstrators, many clad in black hoodies and sporting sunglasses despite the rain, their shouts ricocheting off the three-storey residence.

U.N. culture chief Irina Bokova urged the Security Council on Monday to task peacekeepers with protecting cultural sites and to help prosecute those who destroy historical treasures.

International alarm has been growing over the fate of artifacts and monuments in Iraq and Syria after videos surfaced of jihadists destroying priceless works.

Marooned on a naval base in northwest Germany, pinned down by advancing Allied forces and Adolf Hitler dead, the last leader of the Third Reich hammered out the surrender order.

Seventy years later the telex will go on auction in New York, the flimsy sheet of pink paper valued at $20,000 to $30,000, and an incredibly rare relic from the world's deadliest conflict.

Forty years after it won the war, the Communist Party still rules Vietnam with an iron fist. But with crony capitalism, corruption and inequality now rife, many claim its victory was a hollow one.

From a shattered society plagued by poverty and food shortages, to a middle-income country and World Trade Organization member, Vietnam's authoritarian socialist regime has overseen huge change since Saigon fell to communist troops four decades ago.