Portrait of Nick Ut

Birthday profile

Nick Ut

Nick Ut, Vietnamese-American photographer

Born
March 29, 1951
Age in 2026
75
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1951

About Nick Ut

Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally as Nick Ut (born March 29, 1951), is a Vietnamese-American photographer who worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles. He won both the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and the 1973 World Press Photo of the Year for the 1972 photograph The Terror of War, depicting children running away from a napalm bombing attack during the Vietnam War. Since the release of the documentary The Stringer in 2025, the authorship of the photograph has been disputed; the documentary identified Nguyễn Thành Nghệ as the author, AP stood with the attribution to Ut, and World Press Photo suspended the authorship attribution until more evidence is available. Ut retired in 2017. Examples of his work may be found in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. == Early life == Nick Ut was born on March 29, 1951, in Long An, Vietnam, which was then part of French Indochina. == Career == Ut began to take photographs for the Associated Press when he was 15, just after his older brother Huynh Thanh My, another AP photographer, was killed in Vietnam. His closest friend in the Saigon bureau, Henri Huet, also died in 1971 after volunteering to take the weary Ut's place on an assignment. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Ut himself was wounded three different times in the war in his knee, arm, and stomach. He moved to Tokyo and arrived in Los Angeles two years later. === The Terror of War === The Terror of War, also colloquially called Napalm Girl, is a photograph that was long-credited to Ut but possibly taken by Nguyen Thanh Nghe or Huynh Cong Phuc, according to a World Press investigation.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

Nick Ut timeline

  1. He won both the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and the 1973 World Press Photo of the Year for the 1972 photograph The Terror of War, depicting children running away from a napalm bombing attack during the Vietnam War.
  2. On the 40th anniversary of that Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph in September 2012, Ut became only the third person inducted into the Leica Hall of Fame for his contributions to photojournalism.
  3. In 2021, Nick Ut was awarded the National Medal of Arts for his work during the Vietnam War.
  4. In 2021, he became the first journalist to receive the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States federal governments.

The world when Nick Ut was born

Nick Ut was born in 1951. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1951

  • #1 song"Too Young" – Nat King Cole
  • Top movieAn American in Paris
  • Top TV showI Love Lucy
  • Best-selling bookThe Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentBobby Thomson's "Shot Heard Round the World"
  • Top headlineI Love Lucy premieres and becomes a cultural phenomenon
  • Technology milestoneFirst commercial computer (UNIVAC I) delivered
  • Defining fadI Love Lucy
  • Notable inventionSuper Glue
  • World population2.59 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderHarry S. Truman
  • Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
  • Also wonRochester Royals (NBA)
  • U.S. population154.0M

1951 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Nick Ut's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19512026
Gas$0.27$3.45/gal
Average home$8,800$435,000
Average income$5,500$67,500
Minimum wage$0.75$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.53$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population154.0M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, VIAF, ISNI. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.