On this day, Nov. 18, 1978, cult leader Jim Jones led hundreds of followers in a mass murder-suicide in a remote South American jungle.

Jones, a charismatic Christian preacher who claimed he was the reincarnation of Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha and Vladimir Lenin and also sold pet monkeys to raise money, had built his San Francisco-based church to as many as 8,000 members by the 1970s.