Sanford Koufax (87) nicknamed "the Left Arm of God"
and "Dandy Sandy."

On November 18, 1966, Sandy Koufax, the ace pitcher for the
Los Angeles Dodgers, retired from baseball. He was just 30
years old, and he was retiring after a great season–he’d led
the Dodgers to a National League pennant and won his third
Cy Young award. But he had chronic arthritis in his pitching
arm, and he was afraid that if he kept playing baseball,
eventually he wouldn’t be able to use his left hand at all.
“In those days there was no surgery,” he said much later.
“The wisdom was if you went in there, it would only make
things worse and your career would be over, anyway. Now
you go in, fix it, and you’re OK for next spring.”

On November 18, 1978, Peoples Temple cult founder Jim
Jones (above) led hundreds of his followers in a mass
murder-suicide at their agricultural commune in a remote
part of the South American nation of Guyana. Many of
Jones’ followers willingly ingested a poison-laced punch
while others were forced to do so at gunpoint. The final
death toll at Jonestown that day was 909; a third of those
who perished were children.