List of Famous people who died in 1992
Samuel Reshevsky
Samuel Herman Reshevsky was a Polish chess prodigy and later a leading American chess grandmaster. He was a contender for the World Chess Championship from the mid 1930s to the mid 1960s: he tied for third place in the 1948 World Chess Championship tournament, and tied for second in the 1953 Candidates Tournament. He was an eight-time winner of the US Chess Championship, tying him with Bobby Fischer for the all-time record.
Alex Haley
Alexander Murray Palmer Haley was an American writer and the author of the 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. ABC adapted the book as a television miniseries of the same name and aired it in 1977 to a record-breaking audience of 130 million viewers. In the United States, the book and miniseries raised the public awareness of black American history and inspired a broad interest in genealogy and family history.
Wanda Rutkiewicz
Wanda Rutkiewicz was a Polish mountain climber and computer engineer. She was the first woman to reach the summit of K2 and the third woman to climb Mount Everest.
Isaac Woodard
Isaac Woodard Jr. was a decorated African-American World War II veteran. On February 12, 1946, hours after being honorably discharged from the United States Army, he was attacked while still in uniform by South Carolina police as he was taking a bus home. The attack and his injuries sparked national outrage and galvanized the civil rights movement in the United States.
Ralph Lazo
Ralph Lazo was the only known non-spouse, non-Japanese American who voluntarily relocated to a World War II Japanese American internment camp. His experience was the subject of the 2004 narrative short film Stand Up for Justice: The Ralph Lazo Story.
Sally Mugabe
Sarah Francesca "Sally" Mugabe was the first wife of Robert Mugabe and the First Lady of Zimbabwe from 1987 until her death in 1992. She was popularly known as Amai (Mother) in Zimbabwe.
Chuck Connors
Kevin Joseph Aloysius "Chuck" Connors was an American actor, writer, and professional basketball and baseball player. He is one of only 13 athletes in the history of American professional sports to have played both Major League Baseball and in the National Basketball Association. With a 40-year film and television career, he is best known for his five-year role as Lucas McCain in the highly rated ABC series The Rifleman (1958–63).
William Barrett
William Christopher Barrett (1913–1992) was a professor of philosophy at New York University from 1950 to 1979.
Albert Pierrepoint
Albert Pierrepoint was an English hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career that ended in 1956. His father Henry and uncle Thomas were official hangmen before him.
José Ferrer
José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón, known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor and theatre and film director. He was the first Puerto Rican-born actor and the first Hispanic actor to win an Academy Award. He is well known today for his performance as the defense attorney in The Caine Mutiny.