The world remembers the largest suicide in modern history... What is it?
Today, the world remembers a suicide incident that killed 913 people, in the largest mass suicide in modern history.
On this day in November 1978, the agricultural town of Jonestown in South America witnessed the incident that shook the world, among the members of the Peoples Temple sect, at the order of their charismatic and paranoid leader Jim Jones.
According to an extensive report by the BBC, Jim Jones and his wife, in the mid-sixties, founded the Peoples Temple in the American town of Ukiah with about 100 followers, believing that this step would protect them in the event of a nuclear holocaust.
In 1970 Jones began holding prayers in San Francisco, and by 1972 he opened another temple in Los Angeles.
Jones began making friends with politicians and journalists and became a very famous churchman.
Thousands of followers flocked to him, a large percentage of whom were African Americans.
Jones's attraction was his talk of mind reading and soul healing.
But later reports revealed that Temple members were regularly humiliated, beaten, and blackmailed, and many were coerced or brainwashed to sign a waiver of their property, including their homes, to the Church.
Black members and members of other minority groups were convinced that if they left the Peoples Temple Church they would be arrested in government-run concentration camps.
In 1977, after journalists began asking questions about Jones' practices, he moved with several hundred followers to Jones Town, a complex he was building in Guyana, and took 3-4 years to build.
In November 1978, US Congressman Leo Ryan traveled to Guyana to inspect the activities of the Peoples Temple Church and Jonestown Complex.
The congressman was investigating rumors that cult members were being held against their will, and that some were being physically and psychologically abused, after family members of cult members in the United States expressed concern that their loved ones were being held against their will.
In one high-profile case, the parents of a boy named John Victor Stoen demanded custody of him after they split from the caste, and Jones refused to hand over the child, claiming he was his father.
After arriving in Georgetown, Guyana, Ryan headed straight to the Jonestown complex.
"Contrary to what the concerned relatives told us, no one seemed to be starving as everyone seemed to be in good health," Charles Krause, a Washington Post reporter on that trip recalled.
The group stayed outside the complex overnight and returned the next day.
During their time there, the group was contacted by at least 12 followers who demanded to return to the United States with them.
As Ryan was preparing to return to the United States, several members of the cult, who wanted to leave the compound, boarded his delegation's truck in order to escort him to the United States.
Other members attacked Ryan shortly before the car left the compound, but he escaped unhurt and the truck and the congressman continued on board.
While the delegation waited for the return flight, a group of sect gunmen ambushed the delegation and opened fire on the airstrip from which Ryan and his team were to leave, killing five people, including Ryan and 3 journalists, and wounding 11 others.
Shortly thereafter, Jones released his "revolutionary suicide" plan at the complex, which members had "practised" in the past.
In this context, survivors recall the events of "White Night", sometimes weekly, as Jones declares a crisis over the safety of the compound.
Sometimes those nights included mock mass suicides where followers, including children, lined up and drank juice they were told was mixed with poison in a test of loyalty.
Indeed, a fruit drink with cyanide and sedatives was prepared and then first injected into the mouths of children and infants, and then drank by the adult members, and this time it was not a test.
This came after Jones warned the henchmen that the Guyana army would invade the compound and take the children due to the shooting at the airstrip.
Jones himself died of a gunshot wound.
Fewer than 100 members of the sect in Guyana survived, and the majority of survivors either defected that day or were in Georgetown.
Officials later discovered a cache of firearms, hundreds of passports stacked together, and $500,000.
The Peoples Temple Church was effectively dissolved after the incident.
The settlement, located in northern Guyana, was unusually remote and was also plagued by agricultural deficiencies that prevented the group from becoming self-sufficient.
The members lived together in small community homes, and were reported to have worked long days in the sweltering heat during their daily lives.
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Jim Jones,
Peoples Temple