Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr. (May 5, 1925 – November 18, 1978) was an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as a U.S. Representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until he was murdered in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple shortly before the Jonestown Massacre in 1978.

After the Watts Riots of 1965, then-Assemblyman Ryan took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate and document conditions in the area. In 1970, he investigated the conditions of California prisons by being held, under a pseudonym, as an inmate in Folsom Prison, while presiding as chairman of the Assembly committee that oversaw prison reform. During his time in Congress, Ryan traveled to Newfoundland to investigate the practice of seal hunting.

Ryan was also famous for vocal criticism of the lack of Congressional oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and authored the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, passed in 1974. He was also an early critic of L. Ron Hubbard and his Scientology movement and of the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon. On November 3, 1977, Ryan read into the United States Congressional Record a testimony by John Gordon Clark about the health hazards connected with destructive cults. Ryan is the only U.S. Member of Congress killed in the line of duty. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously in 1983.

Reverend James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 mass suicide of 909 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip. Over 200 children were murdered at Jonestown, almost all of whom were forcibly made to ingest cyanide by the elite Temple members.

Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple in that state in the 1950s. Jones and the Temple later moved to California, and both gained notoriety with the move of the Temple's headquarters to San Francisco in the mid-1970s.

The incident in Guyana ranks among the largest mass suicides in history, though most likely it involved forced suicide and/or murder, and was the single greatest loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001. Among the dead was Leo Ryan, who remains the only Congressman assassinated in the line of duty as a Congressman in the history of the United States.

Karen Lorraine Jacqueline "Jackie" Speier ( /ˈspɪər/; born May 14, 1950) is the U.S. Representative for California's 12th congressional district, serving since 2008. She is a member of the Democratic Party. The district includes the northern two-thirds of San Mateo County (formerly part of the district represented by her political mentor, Leo Ryan) and the southwest quarter of San Francisco.

She is also a former member of the California State Senate who represented parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties. On April 8, 2008, she won the special election for the vacated United States House of Representatives seat of late Congressman Tom Lantos.

Speier was born in 1950 in San Francisco and grew up in an apolitical, working-class family. Her mother, Nancy (née Kanchelian), was Armenian American, and her father, Fred Speier, was the son of a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. Speier took Jacqueline as her confirmation name after Jackie Kennedy. She is a graduate of Mercy High School in Burlingame, which is where her daughter attended as a freshman in the 2008–2009 school year. She earned a B.A. from the University of California, Davis, and a J.D. from the University of California Hastings College of the Law in 1976.

Ryan James Howard (born November 19, 1979) is an American Major League Baseball first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies. Nicknamed "The Big Piece", Howard stands 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm) and weighs 240 pounds (110 kg). He bats and throws left-handed.

Howard was the 2006 National League MVP. Howard is the fastest player to reach both the 100 and 200 home run milestones in Major League Baseball history, passing the marks in 2007 and 2009, respectively.

Due to Howard's reputation as an extreme pull hitter, opposing managers often utilize an unusual infield shift with him at the plate, with the third baseman playing shortstop, the shortstop playing second base, and the second baseman playing in shallow right field.

Howard was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He played for Missouri State University from 1998 to 2001. Howard finished his collegiate career with 50 home runs, 183 RBIs and a .335 career average in 172 games. He was the 1999 Missouri Valley Conference Freshman of the Year. Missouri State Retired his number on December 18, 2010.

Robert Schenk Minton (October 1946 – January 20, 2010) was a retired banker who helped Nigeria manage its debt and a former critic of Scientology.

Minton became a critic of Scientology after reading about its attacks on critics and internet free speech. He appeared on several news programs discussing his criticism of Scientology and the harassment from the church. This included a feature appearance on the June 16, 1998 broadcast of the television news program Dateline NBC. Later that year, he appeared in an A&E "Investigative Reports" installment called "Inside Scientology" which aired in December.

Minton spent over $10 million fighting Scientology. He also participated in demonstrations in front of the Boston Headquarters of the Church of Scientology near his Beacon Hill home.

After reports by Scientology alleging fraud in his Nigerian businesses, Minton successfully sued two German Scientology entities and a spokeswoman for a permanent injunction preventing them from repeating the libel. The decision was confirmed on appeal.