James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was the American founer of the Peoples Temple, which became synonymous with group suicide after the November 18, 1978 death of over 900 people from cyanide poisoning in their isolated agricultural intentional community called Jonestown, along with the death of 9 other people at a nearby airstrip and in Georgetown. To the extent the actions in Jonestown were viewed as a mass suicide, it is one of the largest such mass suicides in history, perhaps the largest in over 1,900 years and the largest mass suicide of United States citizens. At a nearby airstrip, the event also resulted in the first and only murder of a Congressman, Leo Ryan, in the history of the United States, along with the murder of three journalists and a defecting Temple member. Four other Temple members also died in Georgetown that night.