ROSS SIMPSON

On this day in 1978, Cult leader Jim Jones and hundreds of his
followers died in a mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana
in South America. It was the largest mass suicide in modern
history and resulted in the largest single loss of American
civilian life in a non-natural disaster until September 11, 2001.

Shown are bodies of members of the Peoples Temple who died
after their leader Jim Jones ordered them to drink Flav-R-Aid
laced with cyanide. 

Congressman Leo Ryan (above) was among five killed by Temple members at the nearby Port Kaituma airstrip (below).

The first successful sound-synchronized animated cartoon premiered
in New York on this day in 1928. It was Walt Disney’s "Steamboat
Willie," starring Mickey Mouse.

Walt Disney drawing “Steamboat Willie”.

BRIAN THOMAS

During World War II on this day in 1945, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet
leader Josef Stalin began a conference at Yalta to outline plans
for Germany’s defeat.

On this day in 1997, a civil jury in California found O.J. Simpson liable 
in the death of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Goldman’s parents were awarded $8.5 million in compensatory
damages.

Ron Goldman’s father Fred, sister Kim, and stepmother Patty are pictured during OJ’s trial.

Patricia (Patty) Hearst was kidnapped in Berkeley, CA, by the Symbionese Liberation Army on this day in 1974.

Patty Hearst (right) and Donald DeFreeze rob a San Francisco bank
on April 15, 1974.

On December 11, 2003, the Massachusetts Senate put forward legislative
language creating civil unions for same-sex couples to the SJC, asking if
it satisfied the court’s requirements. On February 4, 2004, the court replied
that it was unacceptable to allow different-sex couples marriages but same-
sex couples only civil unions, that the distinction between marriage and civil
unions constituted unconstitutional discrimination, even if the rights and obligations attached to each were identical. It called the difference between
the terms marriage and civil union "a considered choice of language that
reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples
to second-class status."

On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage.

A 7.4 earthquake in Guatemala and Honduras on this day in 1976 
killed more than 22,000 people.

Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974)

The Congressional Gold Medal presented August 15, 1930, to Charles Lindbergh by President Herbert Hoover.