The Explorers' Club, № DXXXIII

Leo Ryan (1925-1978), United States Representative from California (Democrat, 11th District), assassinated while on a fact-finding mission in Guyana by agents of (sic) Peoples Temple founder & leader Jim Jones, mere hours before the Jonestown massacre, 18 November 1978.

Commentary: In 2014, when I was plotting to dedicate The Secret Base to a one-hundred-years-later study of the Weltkrieg of 1914-1918, I aimed to devote at least one episode of "The Explorers' Club" per month to the "War to End All Wars." As the centennial study progressed & the awful reality threatened to overwhelm all before it, I resolved to reserve at least one episode per month to anything other than the Great War. No such reservation was kept in December 2016. So here you go.