In 1972, the U.S. seemed to have found an unlikely weapon in its Cold War struggle against Soviet Russia: a teen chess champion named Bobby Fischer. Though he would be celebrated for decades to come as a chess champ, Bobby Fischer later died in relative obscurity following a descent into mental instability
But in 1972, he was at the center of the world stage. The U.S.S.R. had dominated the Chess World Championship since 1948. It saw its unbroken record as proof of the Soviet Union’s intellectual superiority over the West. But in 1972, Fischer would unseat the USSR’s greatest chess master, reigning world chess champion Boris Spassky.
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