Redemption

Early history

Shatranj made its way via the expanding Islamic Arabian empire to Europe and the Byzantine empire. Chess appeared in Southern Europe during the end of the first millennium, often introduced to new lands by conquering armies, such as the Norman Conquest of England. Chess remained largely unpopular among the North European people – who could not relate to the abstract shapes – but started gaining popularity as soon as figure pieces were introduced.

The sides are conventionally called White and Black. But, in earlier European chess writings, the sides were often called Red and Black because those were the commonly available colors of ink when handwriting drawing a chess game layout. In such layouts, each piece was represented by its name, often abbreviated (e.g. “ch’r” for French “chevalier” = “knight“).

The social value attached to the game – seen as a prestigious pastime associated with nobility and high culture – is clear from the expensive and exquisitely made chessboards of the medieval era. The popularity of chess in the Western courtly society peaked between the 12th and the 15th centuries. The game found mention in the vernacular and Latin language literature throughout Europe, and many works were written on or about chess between the 12th and the 15th centuries. Harold James Ruthven Murray divides the works into three distinct parts: the didactic works eg. Alexander of Neckham’s De scaccis (approx. 1180); works of morality like Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium sive super ludo scacchorum (Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess), written by Jacobus de Cessolis; and the works related to various chess problems, written largely after 1205. Chess terms, likecheck, were used by authors as a metaphor for various situations. Chess was soon incorporated into the knightly style of life in Europe. Peter Alfonsi, in his work Disciplina Clericalis, listed chess among the seven skills that a good knight must acquire. Chess also became a subject of art during this period, with caskets and pendants decorated in various chess forms. Queen Margaret of England’s green and red chess sets – made of jasper and crystal – symbolized chess’s position in royal art treasures. Kings Henry I,Henry II and Richard I of England were chess patrons. Other monarchs who gained similar status were Alfonso X of Spain and Ivan IV of Russia.

Saint Peter Damian denounced the bishop of Florence in 1061 for playing chess even when aware of its evil effects on the society. The bishop of Florence defended himself by declaring that chess involved skill and was therefore “unlike other games,” similar arguments followed in the coming centuries. Two separate incidents in 13th century London involving men of Essex resorting to violence resulting in death as an outcome of playing chess further caused sensation and alarm. The growing popularity of the game – now associated with revelry and violence – alarmed the Church.

The practice of playing chess for money became so widespread during the 13th century that Louis IX of France issued an ordinance against gambling in 1254. This ordinance turned out to be unenforceable and was largely neglected by the common public, and even the courtly society, which continued to enjoy the now prohibited chess tournaments uninterrupted.

By the mid-12th century, the pieces of the chess set were depicted as kings, queens, bishops, knights and men at arms. Chessmen made of ivory began to appear in North-West Europe, and ornate pieces of traditional knight warriors were used as early as the mid 13th century. The initially nondescript pawn had now found association with the pedes, pedinus, or the footman, which symbolized both infantry and loyal domestic service.

The following table provides a glimpse of the changes in names and character of chess pieces as they transitioned from India through Persia to Europe:

A comparison of the Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Latin and English terms for chessmen

Sanskrit	Persian	Arabic	Latin	English
Raja (King)	Shah	Malik	Rex	King
Mantri (Minister)	Vazir (Vizir)	Wazir/Firz	Regina	Queen
Gajah (war elephant)	Fil	Al-Phil/Fil	Episcopus/Comes/Calvus	Bishop/Count/Councillor
Ashva (horse)	Asb	Fars/Hisan	Miles/Eques	Knight
Ratha (chariot)	Rokh	Qalaah/Rukh	Rochus/Marchio	Rook/Margrave
Padati (footman/footsoldier)	Piadeh	Baidaq/Jondi	Pedes/Pedinus	Pawn

The game, as played during the early Middle Ages, was slow, with many games lasting for days. Some variations in rules began to change the shape of the game in by 1300 AD. A notable, but initially unpopular, change was the ability of the pawn to move two places in the first move instead of one.

In Europe some of the pieces gradually got new names:

• Fers: “queen”, because it starts beside the King.
• Aufin: “bishop”, because its two points looked like a bishop’s mitre; In French fou; and others. Its Latin name alfinus was reinterpreted many ways.

Attempts to make the start of the game run faster to get the opposing pieces in contact sooner included:

• Pawn moving two squares in its first move. This led to the en passant rule: a pawn placed so that it could have captured the enemy pawn if it had moved one square forward was allowed to capture it on the passed square. In Italy, the contrary rule (passar battaglia = “to pass battle”) applied: a pawn that moved two squares forward had passed the danger of attack on the intermediate square. It was sometimes not allowed to do this to cover check.^[21].
• King jumping once, to make it quicker to put the king safe in a corner. (This eventually led to castling.)
• Queen once moving two squares with jump, diagonally or straight. This right was sometimes extended to a new queen made bypromoting a pawn.
• The short assize. (“assize” = “sitting”.) Here the pawns started on the third rank; the queens started on d3 and d6 along with the queens’ pawns; the players arranged their other pieces as they wished behind their pawns at the start of the game. This idea did not endure.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chess
 

The History

According to the Triangle authors, Christopher Columbus was the first person to document something strange in the Triangle, reporting that he and his crew observed “strange dancing lights on the horizon”, flames in the sky, and at another point he wrote in his log about bizarre compass bearings in the area. From his log book, dated October 11, 1492 he wrote:

“The land was first seen by a sailor (Rodrigo de Triana), although the Admiral at ten o’clock that evening standing on the quarter-deck saw a light, but so small a body that he could not affirm it to be land; calling to Pero Gutiérrez, groom of the King’s wardrobe, he told him he saw a light, and bid him look that way, which he did and saw it; he did the same to Rodrigo Sánchez of Segovia, whom the King and Queen had sent with the squadron as comptroller, but he was unable to see it from his situation. The Admiral again perceived it once or twice, appearing like the light of a wax candle moving up and down, which some thought an indication of land. But the Admiral held it for certain that land was near…”

Modern scholars checking the original log books have surmised that the lights he saw were the cooking fires of Taino natives in their canoes or on the beach; the compass problems were the result of a false reading based on the movement of a star.

The first article of any kind in which the legend of the Triangle began appeared in newspapers by E.V.W. Jones on September 16, 1950, through the Associated Press. Two years later, Fate magazine published “Sea Mystery At Our Back Door” , a short article by George X. Sand covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a group of five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger bombers on a training mission. Sand’s article was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where the losses took place. Flight 19 alone would be covered in the April 1962 issue of American Legion Magazine. It was claimed that the flight leader had been heard saying “We are entering white water, nothing seems right. We don’t know where we are, the water is green, no white.” It was also claimed that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes “flew off to Mars.” This was the first article to connect the supernatural to Flight 19, but it would take another author, Vincent Gaddis, writing in the February 1964 Argosy magazine to take Flight 19 together with other mysterious disappearances and place it under the umbrella of a new catchy name: “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle”; he would build on that article with a more detailed book, Invisible Horizons, the next year. Others would follow with their own works: John Wallace Spencer (Limbo of the Lost, 1969, repr. 1973) ; Charles Berlitz (The Bermuda Triangle, 1974); Richard Winer (The Devil’s Triangle, 1974) , and many others, all keeping to some of the same supernatural elements outlined by Eckert.

Kusche’s explanation

Lawrence David Kusche, a research librarian from Arizona State University and author of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved (1975)has challenged this trend. Kusche’s research revealed a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies between Berlitz’s accounts and statements from eyewitnesses, participants, and others involved in the initial incidents. He noted cases where pertinent information went unreported, such as the disappearance of round-the-world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst, which Berlitz had presented as a mystery, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Another example was the ore-carrier Berlitz recounted as lost without trace three days out of an Atlanticport when it had been lost three days out of a port with the same name in the Pacific Ocean. Kusche also argued that a large percentage of the incidents which have sparked the Triangle’s mysterious influence actually occurred well outside it. Often his research was surprisingly simple: he would go over period newspapers and see items like weather reports that were never mentioned in the stories.

Kusche came to a conclusion:

• The number of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantly greater, proportionally speaking, than in any other part of the ocean.
• In an area frequented by tropical storms, the number of disappearances that did occur were, for the most part, neither disproportionate, unlikely, nor mysterious; furthermore, Berlitz and other writers would often fail to mention such storms.
• The numbers themselves had been exaggerated by sloppy research. A boat listed as missing would be reported, but its eventual (if belated) return to port may not have been reported.
• Some disappearances had in fact, never happened. One plane crash was said to have taken place in 1937 off Daytona Beach, Florida, in front of hundreds of witnesses; a check of the local papers revealed nothing.

Kusche concluded that:

The Legend of the Bermuda Triangle is a manufactured mystery… perpetuated by writers who either purposely or unknowingly made use of misconceptions, faulty reasoning, and sensationalism.

references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_triangle

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