Jonestown

:For other uses, see Jonestown (disambiguation)

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Jonestown was a town in Guyana established by Peoples Temple cult leader Jim Jones. It was located about six to eight miles (10 to 12 km) from Port Kaituma (). At Jones' directions, the inhabitants committed mass suicide in 1978.

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Jim Jones's the Peoples Temple was formed in Indianapolis, Indiana during the late 1950s. Jones and his 140 followers then moved to Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, California, as they believed that they would be safe from nuclear fallout in case of a nuclear attack on the United States. In the late 1960s, members of Jones's congregation had dwindled to less than a hundred and were on the verge of collapse but Jones managed to secure an affiliation with the Disciples of Christ and in turn kept the survival of the Temple.  Jones's affiliation with the church boosted the Temple's reputation and spread his influence in the West Coast area.  Jones then moved his congregation again to his main church in San Francisco in 1971 and opened another one in Los Angeles.

Peoples Temple: Peoples Temple was a pseudo-religious organization founded in 1955 by Jim Jones that, by the mid-1970s, included over a dozen locations in California including its headquarters in San Francisco. It is best known for the events of November 18, 1978 in Guyana, in which 918 people died at the Peoples T...

Cult: :This article does not discuss "cult" in its original sense of "religious practice"; for that usage see Cult (religion). See Cult (disambiguation) for more meanings of the term "cult"....

Jim Jones: James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was the American founder of the People's Temple church that developed into a group with cult-like beliefs, power structures and practices. On November 18, 1978, most of Peoples Temple's members followed Jones' advice to commit collect...