President of Kalmykia says he was abducted by UFO

www.youtube.com...

I'm very open minded when it comes to UFO's, but this story is a little suspect - especially sine he says that chess has come from outer space. None the less, an interesting story it is.

This guy seems really strange, he had built a Chess City of sorts, and was president of World Chess Federation
I think this article is talking about the same guy. Its from 2004 though.

ELISTA, Russia - Back in the days of the Silk Road caravans, this is what people might have called a mirage - a huge glass dome, surrounded by a California-style housing development, rising from the parched brown steppe.That shimmering vision has been brought to life here in Elista, the capital of the Russian republic of Kalmykia, a monument to the power of ego over nature, not to mention common sense and even reason. Its name is Chess City.

Like a glassed-in Biosphere on Mars, the four-story dome encloses a cool, fresh world of carpets and comfort, of whispers and intense concentration, where the most brilliant minds of chess compete for diamond crowns.

For miles around - in fact for almost all the rest of Kalmykia - 300,000 people live in poverty on the barren plains, where tank trucks deliver drinking water and where dried sheep dung, hoarded through the summer, fuels stoves in winter.

Where Chess is King
Very strange indeed.
Maybe the aliens gave him the money to build this.

[edit on 28-4-2009 by pazcat]

maybe chess was from aliens.

and so was monopoly.

I could imagine his entire town having the populace of many,many Borat type personalitys..Alien chess...Very niiicccee