1978: Mass suicide in Jonestown
Cult leader Jim Jones and hundreds of his People’s Temple followers commit mass suicide in
Guyana. Jones, an American pastor, led his followers to South America in 1977 and set up an agricultural commune called Jonestown in remote north western Guyana. On 14th November 1978, U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan arrived in Jonestown with a group of journalists to investigate the
commune. Four days later, Jones, who some Temple members believed was God, ordered Ryan and his companions ambushed and killed at the airstrip as they attempted to leave. The congressman and four others were murdered. Later that evening, Jones directed his followers in a mass suicide. Hundreds drank a cyanide-laced fruit-flavoured concoction in a clearing in
Jonestown. Those who tried to escape were chased down by Jones’s lieutenants and shot. The final toll was 913 dead, including 276 children. Jones died of a gunshot wound in the head, possibly self-inflicted.
2003
President George W. Bush begins a controversial state visit to
Britain, to first since the beginning of the
Iraq War.
2000
Film stars Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones get married in New York, U.S.A.
1991
In Beirut,
Lebanon, hostages
Terry Waite, the special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and American University professor, Thomas Sutherland, are released by Islamic Jihad. Waite had been kidnapped in January 1987. Sutherland had disappeared in June 1985.
1989
More than 50,000 people take to the streets of Sofia,
Bulgaria to
demand democracy and an end to communist rule.
1987
In England, 31 people are killed as a fire breaks out at Kings Cross Underground Station in London.
1987
In America, a Congressional report into the Iran-Contra scandal, severely criticises the Reagan
administration. 1967
In attempt to stop the spread of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain, the government orders a ban on the movement of farm animals across the country.
1926
Premiere of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie. 1903
America and
Panama sign the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, providing for the sale of the Canal and a Canal Zone to the United States.
1421
In the Netherlands, a seawall at the Zuider Zee dike collapses, leading to mass flooding killing approximately 10,000 people.
1307
Swiss revolutionary leader
William Tell is reputed to have shot the apple off his son’s head with a crossbow.
1913
American astronaut Alan Shepherd - becomes the first American in space on May 5th, 1961.1906
British engineer and inventor Sir Alec Issigonis born in
Turkey. Pioneer of the the economic family motor car with his design for the Morris Minor in 1948. In 1959 designs the Mini Minor - more than 1,000,000 'Minis' are made between 1960 and 2000.
1905
Actress Greta Garbo.1901
George
Horace Gallup. American public opinion statistician. In 1935 founds the American Institute of Public Opinion and establishes the Gallup Poll as an accurate method of assessing political sentiment.
1836
Composer Sir William Gilbert.
