Every fact below names its source and the month we checked it. Local legends are labelled as legends. Spotted a mistake? Tell us through the contact page.
Operation Cedar Falls in 1967 was a larger version of the earlier Operation Crimp of January 1966, with 30,000 troops instead of 8,000.
Operation Crimp began on 7 January 1966 with heavy bombers hitting the Cu Chi region, followed by troops combing it for signs of the enemy. General William Westmoreland then ordered the larger Cedar Falls. On 18 January, US tunnel rats uncovered the Viet Cong district headquarters, which held half a million documents, among them maps of US bases.
Source: Wikipedia, Cu Chi tunnels. Checked October 2026.
Work on the Independence Palace began on 1 July 1962, and the hall was inaugurated on 31 October 1966. It replaced the earlier Norodom Palace, damaged in a 1962 bombing.
President Ngo Dinh Diem ordered the new palace to replace the old one, which two dissident air force pilots had bombed. Diem did not live to see the finished hall, because he was assassinated in a coup in November 1963. General Nguyen Van Thieu, then head of a military junta, inaugurated it and later used it as his home and office.
Source: Wikipedia, Independence Palace. Checked October 2026.
Ngo Viet Thu, the Vietnamese architect of Independence Palace, won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1955.
Ngo Viet Thu won the prize in 1955, recognition from the Beaux-Arts school in Paris, and he also received the Prix de Rome from the French government. President Ngo Dinh Diem later ordered the palace built to his design, in 1962, to replace an older palace that had been badly damaged in a bombing.
Source: Wikipedia, Independence Palace. Checked October 2026.
At 10:45 on 30 April 1975 a North Vietnamese army tank bulldozed through the main gate of Independence Palace.
The palace had been the presidential palace, home and workplace of the president of South Vietnam. On 8 April 1975 a pilot who was an undetected communist spy had already bombed it from a fighter jet, without significant damage. President Thieu fled the country on 21 April, and the tank's arrival effectively ended the Vietnam War.
Source: Wikipedia, Independence Palace. Checked October 2026.
The palace changed names: Norodom Palace, then Independence Palace from 1966 to 1975, then Reunification Hall after November 1975.
In November 1975 the Provisional Revolutionary Government renamed the building Reunification Hall, for the government-owned public hall. The name Independence Palace stayed in use for the historic site that tourists visit. Today the building is officially known as the Reunification Convention Hall or simply Reunification Hall.
Source: Wikipedia, Independence Palace. Checked October 2026.
Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica was completed with a blessing ceremony on Easter Day, 11 April 1880. Construction had taken three years.
Bishop Isidore Colombert laid the foundation stone on 7 October 1877. A granite plate inside the main entry gate records the start and completion dates and the designer. The total cost was 2,500,000 French francs, and at the start the cathedral was called State Cathedral because of where the construction funds came from.
Source: Wikipedia, Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica. Checked October 2026.
The statue of the Virgin Mary at the cathedral reached Saigon on 16 February 1959, when Bishop Pham Van Thien held a ceremony to install it.
Bishop Pham Van Thien attended the Marian Congress at the Vatican and ordered a granite statue of Our Lady of Peace made in Rome. When it arrived, he held a ceremony to install it on the empty base, under the title Regina Pacis. The church has been called Notre-Dame Cathedral since that point.
Source: Wikipedia, Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica. Checked October 2026.
The Cu Chi tunnel complex in Ho Chi Minh City's Cu Chi District is 121 km (75 miles) long.
The complex is part of a much larger network of tunnels under much of the country. The government preserved it after reunification and turned it into a war memorial park. The tunnels were the location of several military campaigns during the Vietnam War, and the Viet Cong's base of operations for the Tet Offensive in 1968.
Source: Wikipedia, Cu Chi tunnels. Checked October 2026.
The outer walls of Saigon Notre-Dame are built with bricks from Toulouse, France. The roof tiles are stamped with the name of a Marseille maker.
All the building materials were imported from France. The contractor did not use coated concrete, yet the bricks have kept their bright red colour. The roof tiles carry the words Guichard Carvin, Marseille St Andre France, which name the district of Marseille where they were produced, so the label doubles as a maker's mark.
Source: Wikipedia, Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica. Checked October 2026.
Two bell towers were added to Saigon Notre-Dame in 1895, each 57.6 m (189 ft) high. Twelve bronze bells weighing 28.85 tonnes hang in them.
Each bell is named after a note of the C Major scale, and they are electrically controlled. They were made in France and brought to Saigon in 1879, years before the towers were added. The crosses on top of the towers are 3.5 m high and weigh 600 kg, and the whole cathedral measures 60.5 m to the top of the cross.
Source: Wikipedia, Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica. Checked October 2026.
Two Cu Chi sites are open to visitors. Ben Duoc has part of the original tunnel system, and Ben Dinh, closer to the city, has tunnel reconstructions.
Both sites belong to the war memorial park, and visitors are invited to crawl around in the safer parts of the tunnels. Low-power lights have been installed at both to make travelling through them easier. At Ben Dinh, the site closer to the city, some tunnels have been made larger to accommodate tourists, so the passages are wider than the originals.
Source: Wikipedia, Cu Chi tunnels. Checked October 2026.
Climate, airports and UNESCO status for Ho Chi Minh City are on its destination page. More places are on the fun facts index.