November 18, 1978

1978Damien Johnson, Irish footballer^[†]

Damien Michael Johnson is a Northern Irish football coach and former international player. Since 2019 he has been first team technical coach & head of player development at Blackburn Rovers.

1978Aldo Montano, Italian fencer^[†]

Aldo Montano III is an Italian fencer and a five-time Olympic medalist.

1978Jim Jones, American cult leader, founded Peoples Temple (born 1931)^[†]

James Warren Jones was an American cult leader, preacher and mass murderer who founded and led the Peoples Temple between 1955 and 1978. Jones and the members of his inner circle planned and orchestrated a mass murder–suicide which he described as “revolutionary suicide”, in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978, including the assassination of U.S. congressman Leo Ryan. Jones and the events that occurred at Jonestown have had a defining influence on society's perception of cults.

1978Leo Ryan, American soldier, educator, and politician (born 1925)^[†]

Leo Joseph Ryan Jr. was an American teacher and Democratic Party politician who represented California's 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 until his assassination hours before the Jonestown massacre in 1978. Before that, he served in the California State Assembly, representing the state's 27th district.

1978The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet makes its first flight, at the Naval Air Test Center in Maryland, United States.^[†]

The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet is an all-weather supersonic, twin-engine, carrier-capable, multirole combat aircraft, designed as both a fighter and attack aircraft. Designed by McDonnell Douglas and Northrop, the F/A-18 was derived from the latter's YF-17 in the 1970s for use by the United States Navy and Marine Corps. The Hornet is also used by the air forces of several other nations, and formerly by the U.S. Navy's Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels.

1978In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones leads his Peoples Temple to a mass murder–suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children.^[†]

The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, an American religious movement under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationally infamous when, on November 18, 1978, a total of 918 people died at the settlement; at the nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma; and at a Temple-run building in Georgetown, Guyana's capital city. The name of the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations.