Saturday 18th of November 1978 (-) — Founder and leader of the Peoples Temple Jim Jones commits suicide by a shot in the head That same day Jones coaxed 910 inhabitants of Jonestown including 303 children into a mass suicide by drinking cyanide-laced grape-flavored Flavor Aid. At the end of a 45-minute recording made during the mass suicide, Jones concluded: "We didn't commit suicide; we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world."