People

Tigran Petrosyan and Fidel Castro

Havana was hosting Chess Olympiad in 1966.

Grandmaster Bobby Fischer was playing a simultaneous game, and Cuban President Fidel Castro was one of his competitors. Fidel, who played chess well, was managing to defeat the future World champion.

Those who witnessed the game stated that reigning World champion of that time Tigran Petrosyan had a great contribution to the victory, helping Fidel find the right way out.

Furthermore, Tigran Petrosyan also played a game with Cuban President that time, which ended in a draw.

Castro gifted the marble table with 64 squares they played at to Petrosyan.

Armenians And Armenia

Vigen Avetisyan

Recent Posts

Scythian Ceremonial Swords and the Art of the Van Kingdom (Urartu)

Among the most arresting objects to survive from the Early Iron Age Near East are…

2 days ago

Abandoned by an Ally: The French Armenian Legion in Cilicia and the Road to the Smyrna Catastrophe

How a promise made to genocide survivors was traded away for peace with Ankara —…

6 days ago

The Vilgort Cup: A Silver Masterpiece of Cilician Armenia (c. 1150–1159 A.D.)

A Fragment That Traveled Across Continents The gilt-silver medallion shown above — two richly dressed…

1 week ago

Hannibal and Artaxias the Great: The Carthaginian General Who Helped Build the “Armenian Carthage”

Few episodes in ancient Armenian history capture the imagination quite like the tradition that Hannibal…

2 weeks ago

The Priestess of the Kingdom of Van: A 9th-Century BC Bronze Figurine in the British Museum

Five angles of one small bronze figure — and what emerges is not an abstract…

3 weeks ago

The Winged Sun and the Armenian Tiara: Royal Symbolism of the Orontid (Yervanduni) Kingdom of Commagene, 163 BC – 72 AD

Introduction Among the successor states that emerged from the fragmentation of the Achaemenid-derived Orontid (Armenian:…

3 weeks ago