And now for our second place winner in the cannibalistic awards. It's hard not to pick the Donner Party being a former US history teacher. Now the gist of the story is that the Donner Party, and sometimes it's referred to the Donner-Reed Party because it was two families, was a group of 87 pioneers who migrated to California on a wagon train using the Oregon Trail. They first originated in Springfield, Illinois, and then they hit the trail where it began in Independence, Missouri in the spring of 1846. Now after following a number of other families in wagons, the party made a fatal mistake. They tried a shortcut. Fueled by rumors of saving weeks of travel, they gambled on what was called the Hastings Cutoff, which instead of the normal route, crossed the Rocky Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert in present-day Utah.