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10 Days that Shook San Francisco

Thirty years ago, two unimaginable tragedies jolted San Francisco in less than a fortnight.

On Nov. 18, 1978, more than 900 men, women and children - many of them poor African Americans from San Francisco - died after drinking a cyanide-laced potion in Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones' compound in the jungles of Guyana.

Then, while San Francisco struggled to grasp the enormity of that tragedy, on Nov. 27 a fiercely conservative ex-supervisor named Dan White assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, one of the nation's few openly gay politicians.
Read entire article at S.F. Chronicle