Good finds!
About Walter Browne: "In a Canadian tournament in 1971, one of Browne’s opponents tried to fluster him in a time-pressure scramble by banging an extra Queen down on the side of the board. The opponent’s pawn was about to make it to the 8th rank and get promoted to a Queen. Browne picked up the extra Queen and hurled it across the tournament room."
I wonder who writes these articles, many of the "facts" seem to be made up on the go. Korchnoi is claimed to have played eight Candidates matches (it is 19), Kasparov's peak rating is said to have been 2849, Anand's 2833, newly opened KGB files are supposed to show that Keres was forced to throw games, etc.
The biggest part of the article on Tal concentrates on the details below :-)
"At a tournament in Poland in 1974, Tal was playing White against Adamski with both players in time trouble. Adamski's flag fell but Tal lost a piece and resigned. At that moment, Tal's wife said, "Black has not yet made 40 moves." A referee intervened and awarded the win to Tal since the flag falling happened before Tal resigned. Adamski appealed but his protest was rejected. Tal won the tournament. Tal's parents were cousins. In 1966 Tal was hit in the head with a bottle in a bar during the 1966 Olympiad in Havana and beaten up. He had been flirting with a woman in the bar and her jealous boyfriend got in a fight with Tal. He missed the first five rounds of the Olympics because of his injuries."
One can learn a lot about chess history through the Chessopedia feature:
von Bardeleben was “the strongest German player of the late 19th century” (Lasker and Tarrasch were also rather strong).
Steinitz was “the official world champion from 1866 to 1894. Steinitz took 6th place in the London 1851 tournament”, and “challenged God to a match and occasionally beat Him at chess with pawn odds”.
There were no articles on for example Botvinnik, Spassky and Smyslov, but the text on “Radoulf” Charousek deserves to be quoted in full: “He joined a tournament in Nuremberg, Germany, He had the name of Dust Devil. After he played Lasker, Lasker said: someday I have to play him for world championship. The boy only finished 12ths, 12ths! But then he looked further- One of the people Charousek beat was Lasker. Charousek's story was a tragic one, he died when he was 27. Only 27! The games below were the tragic heroes”.