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Do you call that a game? Ha! Ha! No, thankee; life's too short for chess - Henry James Byron, in Our Boys (1875)
English playwright Henry James Byron's character aside, who doesn't love chess? Though Garry Kasparov once mentioned that "chess is mental torture," we'll keep this list of neatolicious facts about chess a fun read:
1. Chaturanga: the grandaddy of chess
The Hindu deity Krishna and his consort Radha playing chaturanga
Though there are various schools of thought, the version that is accepted by most as the forefather of chess is the 6th century Indian game of chaturanga (Sanskrit for "four divisions of military"). The name came from the battle formation of an army platoon: infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots - represented in the chess pieces of pawn, knight, bishop, and rook.
The game came to Persia in the 7th century and was renamed chatrang then shatranj. There, players started calling "Shah!" (Persian for "King!") when attacking the opponent's king, and "Shah mat!" (Persian for "the king is finished!") when they win. From these words, we get the words for "check" and "checkmate."
You can still play chaturanga, or a four-player chaturanga, if you want.
2. The Turk: 18th Century Chess-Playing Machine
In 1770, Hungarian inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen created The Turk, a chess-playing automaton to impress the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. And impressive it was: The life-size "Turk" sat on top of a large cabinet with doors that opened to reveal complicated gears and cogs. Its mechanical hand would move the chess pieces as it played and it would even make various facial expressions.
The Turk was a chess genius: it beat skilled and "celebrity" opponents alike (even Benjamin Franklin played against The Turk when he was serving as the US ambassador to France, as well as Napoleon Bonaparte). It could also do complicated chess puzzles like the knight's tour (where the knight is moved around the chessboard, touching each square once and only once along the way).
After the Turk was lost in a fire, it was revealed that the whole thing was a hoax: a human chess master was inside the Turk directing its every move. Kempelen had even built in a sliding seat that allowed the man to avoid detection as the various doors are opened to reveal the fake machineries.
Link: Mechanical
Turk: The True Story of the Chess Playing Machine That Fooled the World
3. Shannon number: the possible number of moves in chess
In
1950, information theorist Claude Shannon of Bell Telephone Laboratories
wanted to find out whether a computer could be programmed to play chess.
He calculated the number of possible moves* in chess to be 10120, which became known as the Shannon number. By the way, that's more than the number of all atoms in the universe (estimated between 4x 1079 and 1081).
Shannon wrote that "a machine operating at the rate of one variation per micro-second would require over 1090 years to calculate the first move!" (Source)
*If you want to be technical, the number of possible positions after fifty-move rule is "just" 1043.
4. The shortest and longest games of chess
The
quickest possible checkmate is called the Fool's
mate or the two-move checkmate. It never happens in a real chess game,
except with a really weak opponent (i.e. when playing a fool).
Though technically forfeits are games won with zero moves and there have been games drawn without any moves, the shortest recorded chess game was between German grandmaster Robert Hübner and then 19-year-old Kenneth Rogoff playing in the 1972 World Student Team Championship game. Hübner played one move and offered a draw to Rogoff, who accepted (as the story went, the arbiters insisted that some moves be played so the duo played a few non-sensical moves instead!). Rogoff, by the way, went on to become a Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Harvard University.
The longest game of chess (under modern time rule) was played by Ivan Nikolic and Goran Arsovic in Belgrade in 1989. The duo played for 20 hours and 15 minutes, ending in 269-move draw.
5. Simul: playing chess against multiple opponents at a time
Some people are so good at chess, they can play against more than one opponent at a given time. In 1922, World Champion José Raúl Capablanca played 103 opponents simultaneously and won 102 of the games (with 1 draw).
Some people are very good at chess, but not so good at simul. In 1951, International Master Robert Wade played 30 Russian schoolboys aged 14 and under - and lost 20 games and drawn the remaining 10!
The
world record for simultaneous chess exhibition (or "simul" as
chess lovers often call it) was just set in 2009 by Bulgarian Grandmaster
Kiril Georgiev. He played 360 games for more than 14 hours. He won 284
games, drawn 70 and lost 6 games.
The neatest world record for simultaneous chess, hands down, was set by George "Kolty" Koltanowski in Edinburgh in 1937. He played 34 chess games simultaneously ... while blindfolded! He won 24 games and lost 10 over a period of 13 hours. In 1960, Koltanowski did one better: he played 56 chess games blindfolded (with only 10 seconds a move) ... and won 50 and drew 6! After the games were over, he could recite the complete moves from memory.
His wife Leah once said this about her husband's prodigious chess memory: "I don't know how he does it. He can't even remember to bring home a loaf of bread from the supermarket." (Source)
(Photo: Cleveland Public Library)
6. Why must I lose to this idiot?
Chess
grandmaster and writer Aron Nimzowitsch, who has been called "perhaps
the most brilliant theoretician and teacher in the history of the game,"
(he was a leading proponent of the hypermodern school of chess) liked
to stand on his head and once broke a leg in a tournament.
When he learned that he had lost a chess game to Friedrich Saemisch, Nimzowitsch jumped up on the table and yelled "Why must I lose to this idiot?"
Incidentally, Nimzowitsch also carried around a card that proclaimed him to be "Candidate for the World Championship of Chess and Crown Prince of the Chess World." (Source)
7. Chess Boxing
Garry Kasparov once famously said that "chess is mental torture,"
so perhaps it's only natural that someone decided to connect it with physical
torture. In 1992, cartoonist Enki Bilal thought of the idea of combining
chess with boxing for his comic book Froid
Equateur
In 2001, Dutch artist Iepe Rubingh decided to bring chess boxing to reality. In Rubingh's version, opponents alternate between playing rounds of chess and boxing. While the idea is a bit strange, chess boxing has grown into a somewhat popular sport. It even has a governing body, the World Chess Boxing organization (motto: "Fighting is done in the ring and wars are waged on the board.") and world championship games (the first one in 2003 was won by Rubingh himself).
Both players have to be skilled at chess and boxing as you can either win by checkmate or knockout.
Here's a clip of Iepe the Joker vs. Luis the Lawyer at the very first world chess boxing championship in Amsterdam:
[YouTube Clip,
fun starts at 1:40 | Here's
part 2]
8. Bobby Fisher: the greatest - and craziest - chess player that ever lived
17-year-old Bobby Fisher playing against world champion Mikhail Tal in
1960.
Bobby Fisher is considered by many to be one of the greatest players (if not the greatest) in the history of chess. And while there's no denying that the man's brilliant (he became the youngest-ever junior champion at the age of 13 and a grandmaster at 15), what made Bobby Fisher fascinating was his craziness and paranoia.
Rene Chun of The Atlantic wrote an interesting article titled Bobby Fisher's Pathetic Endgame that offers a glimpse into the strange (and sad) world of the chess genius:
In 1977, after a bitter falling-out that led Fischer to claim that the [Worldwide Church of God] was taking its orders from a "satanical secret world government," he cut all ties with the Church. Then he crawled even further into his own netherworld. He began dressing like a hobo. He took up residence in seedy hotels. He began worrying about the purity of his bodily fluids. He bought great quantities of exotic herbal potions, which he carried in a suitcase, to stave off the toxins he feared might be secretly put in his food and water by Soviet agents. According to a 1985 article in Sports Illustrated, Fischer medicated himself with such esoteric remedies as Mexican rattlesnake pills ("good for general health") and Chinese healthy-brain pills ("good for headaches"). His suitcase also contained a large orange-juice squeezer and lots and lots of vitamins. He always kept the suitcase locked, even when he was staying with friends. "If the Commies come to poison me, I don't want to make it easy for them," he explained to a friend. Perhaps the most telling sign of his rapid mental deterioration was that he insisted on having all his dental fillings removed. "If somebody took a filling out and put in an electronic device, he could influence your thinking," Fischer confided to a friend. "I don't want anything artificial in my head."
9. Star Trek Tri-D Chess
Amongst
the many chess variants out there, the most famous is probably the three-dimensional
chess or Tri-D chess seen in Star Trek TV episodes and movies.
The original Star Trek prop was cobbled using boards from 3-D checkers and 3-D tic tac toe. The rules of the game was never explained in the storyline (beyond the famous "Queen to Queen's Level Three" line by Scottie for transporter clearance in TOS: Whom Gods Destroy), but in 1976, programmer and Star Trek fan Andrew Bartmess developed what is now the standard rules for playing Tri-D chess.
For more chess variants, check out The Chess Variant Pages
10. Man vs. Machine: Deep Blue Beat World Champion Garry Kasparov
It
had been the dream of computer scientists everywhere to program a chess-playing
computer that could win against a human chess genius. In 1985, doctoral
students Feng-hsiung Hsu, Murray Campbell and Thomas Anantharaman came
up with a computer that evolved into Deep Thought, the first chess-playing
computer of a serious caliber. (Yes, it was named after the computer in
Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy - the very
same on that returned "42" as the answer to life, the universe,
and everything).
Deep Thought evolved further into Deep Blue, a massively parallel, RS/6000 SP-based IBM computer system. And on February 10, 1996, it happened: Deep Blue defeated the reigning world champion Garry Kasparov in a chess game. Kasparov bounced back and won the next 3 games and drawn the remaining two, thus beating the machine.
But victory for humans didn't last long. In 1997, an upgraded Deep Blue (nicknamed "Deeper Blue") with a capability of evaluating 200 million positions per second (vs 3 chess positions per second for its opponent), defeated Kasparov 3½–2½ in a rematch. Kasparov, however, maintained that IBM cheated and demanded another rematch. IBM, however, declined and dismantled Deep Blue.
Phew, C is done! I'm sure there's a lot more fun facts about chess, so if you know of any, please add them to the comments. And what shall we do for "D"?
See also our previous Neatolicious Fun Facts: Apple, and Beer.
By popular request, here are the neatolicious fun facts for ... beer:
1. Beer is old stuff: Recipe found in 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet
The first references to beer dates to as early as 6,000 BC. The very first recipe for beer is found on a 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet containing the Hymn to Ninkasi, a prayer to the goddess of brewing. It tells how to brew beer from barley:
The filtering vat, which makes
a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on [top of]
a large collector vat.
Ninkasi, the filtering vat,
which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on [top of]
a large collector vat.
If you're curious as to how the world's oldest beer tastes like, the Anchor Brewing Company produced a limited edition beer (under the Ninkasi label) based on the recipe.
2. Beer is not mentioned in the bible
Wine was mentioned - many times, but not beer. Instead, the Bible mentioned "strong drink," which some translated as fermented beverage made from grain (i.e. beer). (Source)
3. The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock Because It
Ran Out of Beer
The Mayflower was supposed to sail to the mouth of the Hudson River, near
present-day New York City - but the Pilgrims decided to head to Plymouth
Bay because they were low on beer.
Colonists William Bradford and Edward Winslow wrote this first-hand account: "We could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer ..."
Why did the ship carry beer? It's because unlike water, beer don't go bad on long ocean voyages - but lest you think the shipmates were all plastered all the time, the type of beer they carried was "ship's beer," which wasn't very alcoholic. (Source: The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams - though consider this rebuttal by Bob Skilnik, author of Beer & Food: An American History)
4.
World's Strongest Beer: Sam Adams Utopias MMII
The strongest beer in the world was the Sam Adams Utopias MMII, a limited-run (only 3,000 bottles were made) production by Boston Beer Co. It weighs in at 24 percent alcohol by volume in a mini, old-school, copper-brewing kettles. If you want to get one, be prepared to shell out at least $100.
For
flavors, aroma and stability. Hop is the flower of the hop vine (a cousin
of the hemp, actually).
Early beers didn't use hops - instead, they were flavored with wild rosemary, coriander, ginger, anise seed, juniper berries and even wood bark.
Hop was used as flavorings as early as 400 BC by captive Jews in Babylon, but historians think that the real reason it was used as additive was for its antiseptic properties. By adding hops, brewers didn't have to have high alcohol content to prevent spoilage. This meant less grains and therefore more profit. (Source)
6. Beer in a Bag
Photo: indy2kro
[Flickr] - not sure if this is the original photographer
Quick - how many different ways of transporting beer can you think of? Bottles, glass, cans and kegs? You've missed one: in China, you can buy beer in a plastic bag!
7. St. Arnold: Patron Saint of Brewing
In
the 11th century, Arnold of Soissons, a bishop in the Benedictine St.
Medard's Abbey in Soissons, France, began to brew beer.
He encouraged the locals to drink beer instead of water for its health benefits (beer was healthier than water mainly because it was boiled and thus sterilized from pathogens). No wonder they made him a saint!
8. How do you say Beer in Zulu?
Utshwala.
This website will help: here's how to say Beer in 78 Languages. Or if you want to order a beer in 50 languages.
9. "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" That's what Benjamin Franklin said, anyhow.
That was fun - but we barely scratched the potential with beer. Got any trivia about beer? Add them to the comment! And what should we do for "C" (no cats, mmmkay?)
Hello, everybody! After writing about 100 articles for Neatorama in the past couple of years, I can't bear to write another Top 10 article - at least for a while (other Neatorama authors undoubtedly will pick up the slack). So, please let me try something new. In what I hope will be a regular feature, I'm going to take a regular object and try find the neatest nuggets of knowledge about it.
Let's start with the letter A ... say, apple. So without any further ado, here is Neatolicious Fun Facts: Apple.
1. The Wild Ancestor of All Apples: Malus sieversii
Today,
there are some 7,500 different cultivars of apples that are derived from
a single wild ancestor from Central Asia: Malus sieversii. In
fact, that species still grows in the mountains of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan and Xinjiang, China.
Photo: Malus sieversii, as collected by the 1996 Kazakhstan Apple Collection Mission of the USDA Agricultural Research Service
2. Apple: The Forbidden Fruit?
From The Fall of Man by Titian (c. 1570)
In the Bible, God forbids Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. When they eat the fruit anyway, Adam and Even are expelled from the Garden of Eden.
But why apple? The Book of Genesis never mentioned the fruit as apple - in fact, early interpretations pointed to fig, grapes, citron (a lemonlike fruit), carob, and pomegranate (the most likely culprit), but never apple.
The bad rap for apple began when Christians translated the Bible into Latin. Malus, the Latin word for bad or evil is very similar to the word for apple (malum). It seems like the assignation of apple as the forbidden fruit was the result of a pun. Source
3. "An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away"
The first version of the proverb is actually from Pembrokeshire, Wales. The first recorded use was in the February 1866 edition of Notes and Queries magazine: "Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread." (Source)
It became popular, however, when fruit specialist J.T. Stinson used it in his speech at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
Apples do have a lot of good nutrients and pythochemicals that may help reduce the risk of heart disease, colon cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, and even tooth decay. But don't eat the seeds; they are mildly poisonous.
4. The Big Apple
Why
is New York City called The Big Apple? Parking ticket judge by day and
amateur etymologist by night Barry
Popik tracked down the first use of the term "The Big Apple"
back to the 1920s by journalist John J. Fitz Gerald, a horse racing reporter
for the New York Morning Telegraph.
Fitz Gerald overheard stable hands in New Orleans racetrack talk about the "Big Apple" racing circuit, meaning "the big time" where a lot of money could be won (Horses love apples, by the way). He liked the term, and wrote a column called "Around the Big Apple" on February 18, 1924:
The Big Apple. The dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There's only one Big Apple. That's New York. (Source)
5. Bobbing for Apples
The
game bobbing for apples comes from Celtic festival of Samhain, the precursor
of Halloween. As apple is associated with love or fertility, the winner
of the game - the person who catch an apple with his or her teeth first
- is supposed to be the first to marry. (Photo: calebdzahnd
[Flickr])
On February 19, 2008, Ahrita Furman of Brooklyn, New York - who has set 216 official Guinness records - set the world record for bobbing for apples: He bobbed 33 apples in a minute.
Oh, and remember that tradition of throwing rice at weddings? Well, that came from the tradition of throwing apples at newlyweds (yikes!)
6. Record-Breaking Apples
In
2005, Chisato Iwasaki of Hirosaki City, Japan, grew the world's
heaviest apple. At 4 lb 1 oz (1.849 kg), it's the size of a small
pumpkin!
The world's longest single continuous apple peel was created in 1976 by Kathy Wafler Madison at the tender age of 16. It measured 172 feet, 4 inches long. Kathy grew up to run her own apple tree nursery!
7. Newton's Apple
Legend has it that Isaac Newton was inspired to formulate his theory of universal gravitation when an apple fell on his head. Though that was apocryphal, the part that the physicist was inspired by the apple was actually real. Newton himself wrote that he witnessed the falling apple while staring out the window of his house at Woolsthorpe Manor.
Purported offspring of the Newton’s Apple Tree in Woolsthorpe Manor (Image Source: Mathematical Association of America)
What happened to the apple tree? Various places claim that they have the tree. The King's School in Grantham claims that they bought the tree, uprooted it and transported it to the headmaster's garden. The staff of Woolsthorpe Manor, of course, disagreed: they claim that the tree is still present in their garden. Trinity College in Cambridge claimed that they have a descendant of the original tree growing outside the room Newton lived when he studied there.
Oh, and what kind of apple was it? It's a green cooking apple called the Flower of Kent: a pear-shaped, mealy, and generally of poor quality of an apple by today's standard.
See also: Neatorama's 10 Strange Facts About Newton
8. How Did Apple the Computer Company Get Its Name?
Steve Jobs worked summer jobs at an apple farm and liked the Beatles' record label, Apple. So, when he and Steve Wozniak was trying to figure out a name for their new computer company, they decided that if they couldn't think of a better name, they'd name it Apple. Apparently, they couldn't! (Source)
... and talking about Newton, would you know it that Apple's first logo was of Sir Isaac sitting underneath an apple tree?
See also: Neatorama's Evolution of Tech Logos
Do you know more apple fun facts? Please add them to the comment ... and while you're at it, what should we do for "B"?
