Humphrey Bogart was an expert chess player. Here’s a 1951 game he played with Lauren Bacall — she had black:

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 g6 4. d3 d5 5. exd5 Qxd5 6. c4 Bb4+ 7. Nc3 Bxc3+ 8. bxc3 Qd6 9. a4 Bd7 10. Ba3 Qf6 11. Qe2 Nge7 12. Bxe7 Qxe7 13. Bxc6 Bxc6 14. Nxe5 Bxg2 15. Rg1 Bh3 16. Rg3 Be6 17. d4 c6 18. d5 cxd5 19. cxd5 Bxd5 20. c4 Be6 21. Re3 f6 22. Nd3 Kf7 23. Nf4 Rae8 24. Nxe6 Qb4+ 25. Kf1 Re7 26. Re1 Rhe8

27. Nd8+ Kf8 28. Rxe7 Rxe7 29. Qxe7+ Qxe7 30. Rxe7 Kxe7 31. Nxb7 1-0

There’s no record of her reaction.

Arriving home early one day, Yogi Berra asked his wife where she’d been that afternoon.

She said she’d taken their son to see Doctor Zhivago.

Berra said, “What the hell’s wrong with him now?”

Catcher Moe Berg earned his reputation as “the brainiest guy in baseball.” At Princeton, where he studied seven languages, he communicated plays in Latin with the second baseman, and he later attended Columbia Law School and the Sorbonne while reading 10 newspapers a day. After 15 undistinguished seasons as a ballplayer, he went to work as a spy during World War II, parachuting into Yugoslavia for the Office of Strategic Services and interviewing Italian physicists about the German nuclear program. (He chose not to shoot Werner Heisenberg.) His is the only baseball card on display at CIA headquarters.

Berg was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1945, but he spent the last 20 years of his life living quietly with siblings. He declined to write a memoir, so much of his life is still a mystery. When asked why he had “wasted” his intellectual gifts on baseball, he said, “I’d rather be a ballplayer than a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.” His final words were “How did the Mets do today?”

What’s unusual about this position?

Twenty-eight consecutive checks:

1. c7+ N(8)xc7+ 2. bxc7+ Nxc7+ 3. dxc7+ Ke7+ 4. g8(=N)+ Rxg8+ 5. hxg8(=N)+ Qxg8+ 6. f8(=B)+ Qxf8+ 7. Qe8+ Qxe8+ 8. d8(=Q)+ Qxd8+ 9. c8(=N)+ Rxc8+ 10. bxc8(=N)+ Qxc8+ 11. Bb8+ Bxe4+ 12. Nd5+ Bxd5+ 13. Nc6+ Bxc6+ 14. Rb7+ Qxb7 mate

(Composed by Leathem.)

Harold Cross once composed a chess position with 29 possible mates.

In this one, by Henry Dudeney, White can choose among 36 different mates on the move:

If two chessplayers cooperate, how quickly can they reach a stalemate without any captures? Working independently, Sam Loyd, E.N. Frankenstein, W.H. Thompson, and Henry Dudeney all produced the same position, which can be reached in 12 moves:

1. d4 e5 2. Qd3 Qh4 3. Qg3 Bb4+ 4. Nd2 a5 5. a4 d6 6. h3 Be6 7. Ra3 f5 8. Qh2 c5 9. Rg3 Bb3 10. c4 f4 11. f3 e4 12. d5 e3

The annual Leonid meteor shower was unusually spectacular in November 1833, raining a hundred thousand meteors per hour over the eastern United States.

“[There were] thousands of luminous bodies shooting across the firmament in every direction,” wrote the Florence, Ala., Gazette. “There was little wind and not a trace of clouds, and the meteors succeeded each other in quick succession.”

That spectacle is remembered in a unique way — it’s the basis of the jazz standard “Stars Fell on Alabama”:

I never planned in my imagination
A situation so heavenly
A fairy land where no one else could enter
And in the center just you and me

We lived our little drama
We kissed in a field of white
And stars fell on Alabama last night.