November 29: On This Day in World History … briefly
Before forming a church, Jim Jones had become enamoured with communism and frustrated by the harassment communists received in the US.
1978: Corpses from mass suicide discovered
Horrified rescue workers came across a bizarre mass suicide at the site of the Reverend Jim Jones’s People’s Temple in Guyana. Alerted by the disappearance of Congressman Leo Ryan and his five colleagues on a mission to investigate Jones’s cult, they found more than 900 corpses scattered about the temple grounds.
Survivors found huddled in the bushes testified that the dead had ingested Kool-Aid laced with cyanide on the orders of their leader Jones, who apparently described it as ‘an act of revolutionary suicide’ before shooting himself in the head.
Jones was formerly a Methodist minister. In total, 909 individuals died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed ‘revolutionary suicide’ by Jones and some members on an audio tape of the event and in prior discussions.
The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others by temple members at Port Kaituma, including United States Congressman Leo Ryan, an act that Jones ordered. Four other Temple members committed murder-suicide in Georgetown at Jones’ command.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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