Also Within This Year in History:
1992
After a devastating Windsor Castle fire and assorted family crises, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II called 1992 her “annus horribilis,” or horrible year. The police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles sparked one of the worst riots in U.S. history, while exploding sewers in Mexico killed hundreds. On the brighter side, South Africa ended apartheid, the U.S. and Russia declared the Cold War over, Mae Jemison became the first Black woman in space and a big purple dinosaur named Barney hit TV, singing about love, kindness and cleaning up.
One of the most widely ridiculed and memorable gaffes in the history of the United States Presidency occurred in Japan on the evening of January 8, 1992, when President George…
In 1985, singer‑songwriter Paul Simon made a controversial nine‑day visit to South Africa—a visit that some felt was in violation of a United Nations cultural boycott, but a visit that…
On January 23, 1992, President George H.W. Bush hosts a White House reception for the U.S. women’s soccer team in honor of their recent World Cup win. On this occasion,…
On January 27, 1992, a judge in the murder trial of porn producer Jim Mitchell allows the first‑ever use of video re‑creation of the crime. Jim Mitchell shot his brother…
After suffering through centuries of bloody conflict, the nations of Western Europe finally unite in the spirit of economic cooperation with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty of European Union.…
After stunning the world three months earlier with the news he had contracted the HIV virus and was immediately retiring from the Los Angeles Lakers, basketball great Magic Johnson returns…
Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, accused of raping 18‑year‑old beauty‑pageant contestant Desiree Washington, is found guilty by an Indiana jury. The following month, Tyson was given a 10‑year prison…
On February 19, 1992, 24‑year‑old recent film school graduate John Singleton becomes the youngest and first Black film director nominated for an Academy Award for his movie, Boyz n the…
In his debut film, Boyz N the Hood (1991), John Singleton depicted life on the streets of his native Los Angeles–not the famously sunny, palm‑tree‑lined boulevards but the tough, gang‑ruled…
A 6.8‑magnitude earthquake near Erzincan, Turkey, and an unusually powerful aftershock two days later, kills at least 500 people and leaves 50,000 people homeless. Erzincan was a provincial capital city…
On March 17, 1992, white South Africans vote overwhelmingly in a referendum to end minority rule, by a margin of 68.7 percent to 31.2 percent. Thus ends the turbulent period…
A jury in New York finds mobster John Gotti, nicknamed the Teflon Don for his ability to elude conviction, guilty on 13 counts, including murder and racketeering. In the wake…
A march and rally in support of reproductive justice for women draws several hundred thousand people to demonstrations in Washington, D.C. One of the largest protest marches on the nation’s…
Robert Alton Harris is executed in California’s gas chamber after 13 years on death row. This was California’s first execution since former Chief Justice Rose Bird and two other state…
Dozens of sewer explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico, kill more than 200 people and damage 1,000 buildings on April 22, 1992. The series of explosions was caused by a gas leak,…
A jury in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley acquits four police officers who had been charged with using excessive force in arresting Black motorist Rodney King a year…
The World War II monument opens, the concentration camp, Dachau is liberated, New Orleans falls to the Union army in the Civil War, and the first international space flight is…
In Los Angeles, California, four Los Angeles police officers that had been caught beating an unarmed African American motorist in an amateur video are acquitted of any wrongdoing in the…
Exxon executive Sidney Reso dies in a storage vault in New Jersey. Four days earlier, he was abducted from the driveway of his Morris Township, New Jersey, home. Reso was…
In an event steeped in symbolism, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev reviews the Cold War in a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri—the site of Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain”…
