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====David Koresh and the Branch Davidians====
[[File: Flat_of_Branch_Davidians.png|300px|thumbnail|rightleft|The Branch Davidian Flag]]
In order to understand how the Waco tragedy affected American society, a brief background examination of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians is warranted. The Branch Davidian sect was the idea of a Hungarian immigrant named Victor Houteff who converted to the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) church in 1918 and within a few years became one of its major leaders. Believing that his vision of the Bible and the SDA church was the correct one, Houteff took a small group of followers and broke from the main body of the church in 1933, moving to a tract of land outside of Waco, Texas that he christened “Mount Carmel” in reference to the biblical locale in northern Israel.