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Pictures of those that died in 1978 were laid
out at the memorial service in 2011.
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"Jonestown"
was the informal name for the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project formed
by the Peoples Temple, an American
religious organization under the leadership of Jim Jones,
in northwestern Guyana.
It became internationally notorious when on November 18, 1978, a total of 918
people died in the remote commune, at the nearby airstrip in Port
Kaituma, and in Georgetown, Guyana's capital city. The name of
the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations.
A
total of 909 Americans 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.
While
some refer to the events in Jonestown as mass
suicide, many others, including Jonestown survivors, regard them as mass
murder. All who drank poison did so under duress, and more than a third of
victims (304) were minors. It was the largest such event in modern history and
resulted in the largest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate
act until September 11, 2001. In recent years, the
Jonestown massacre has been the subject of several conspiracy theories.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
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