Friday Poll: Who Invented Chess?

Here’s a surprising headline:

World Chess President Claims He Was Abducted By Space Aliens — And They Invented Chess

“They came in a flying saucer, picked me up, and I spent a whole day in outer space.”

The story‘s over at the Huffington Post, where current International Chess Foundation president – and former president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia – Kirsan Ilyumzhinov describes his supposed encounters:

It was not in our Russian space vehicles, but with aliens. They came in a flying saucer, picked me up, and I spent a whole day in outer space.

It was from my apartment. They flew in and picked me up. They were wearing yellow spacesuits. I remember this moment exactly. We went off to their interplanetary ship, and I started to feel a lack of air, a lack of oxygen. They gave me a spacesuit as well.

One of the aliens pointed to his chest and indicated that the oxygen supply could be regulated by turning a dial. So this is what I did.

Ilyumzhinov also contends that chess was likely an extraterrestrial invention:

“My theory is that chess comes from space. Because it’s the same rules — 64 squares, black and white, and the same rules in Japan, in China, in Qatar, in Mongolia, in Africa — the rules are the same. Why? I think maybe it is from space.”

Below, Ilyumzhinov describes his supposed encounter with beings not-of-this-world: