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Podcast: Today In History with The Retrospectors
Episode: The Heaven's Gate 'Ascendancy'
Description: The mass suicide of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult in San Diego County was discovered on 26th March, 1997. The tragedy came to light after a former member alerted authorities, having received a farewell videotape recorded by the group.
Leader Marshall Applewhite had preached that a spacecraft travelling in the wake of the Comet Hale–Bopp would carry their souls to a higher level of existence. In preparation, they dressed uniformly and consumed a lethal mixture of phenobarbital and alcohol in a carefully planned sequence over several days.
That belief system had developed over decades. App...