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Jonestown
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Large metal vat in the foreground with a dark liquid inside, surrounded by scattered cups and boxes, with numerous bodies lying on the ground near a wooden walkway in Jonestown, Guyana. Locator map of Guyana marking Jonestown in the country's northwest interior and Georgetown on the Atlantic coast, with Venezuela, Brazil, and Suriname shown nearby. Jim Jones
The chilling story of the Jonestown Massacre
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Large metal vat in the foreground with a dark liquid inside, surrounded by scattered cups and boxes, with numerous bodies lying on the ground near a wooden walkway in Jonestown, Guyana.
Jonestown Massacre Bodies of members of Peoples Temple who died after their leader, Jim Jones, ordered them to drink a cyanide-laced beverage. The vat that contained the poison is in the foreground.

Jonestown

mass murder-suicide, Guyana [1978]
Also known as: Jonestown massacre
Written by
Alison Eldridge
Alison Eldridge was Managing Editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Alison Eldridge
Fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
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•History

Jonestown, (November 18, 1978), location of the mass murder-suicide of members of the California-based Peoples Temple cult at the behest of their charismatic but paranoid leader, Jim Jones, in Jonestown agricultural commune, Guyana. The death toll exceeded 900, including some 300 who were age 17 and under, making the incident one of the largest mass deaths in American history. Jones opened his first church in the mid-1950s in Indianapolis. At the time he was not...

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