LIFE magazine did a pictorial article way back in 1962 on a young American chess player by the name of Bobby Fischer. I published some of them here on this blog several years ago. You can find these photos and some others that were never published at that link. Below is one photo of Bobby with his sister Joan and his niece, Elisabeth .
Though I had seen a copy of the original LIFE article some time back, I do not recall ever having seen the photo above. It is quite an historic family photo, and one that presses home the point of how fragile life and genius is. All three individuals in the above photo are dead, and have been for some time now. Joan died in 1998 at age 60 of a brain hemorrhage. Elisabeth–who would go on to become a world famous psychiatrist–would die at the tragically young age of 40 of a brain tumor. And of course, we need not remind ourselves of how Bobby passed away at age 64.
In several previous blog entries (here is one) I discussed the amazing Targ family (Joan married a world famous physicist and specialist in parapsychology —Russell Targ ) and their connection to CIA-funded research into remote viewing .:
”Elisabeth Fischer Targ (August 4, 1961 – July 18, 2002) was a psychiatrist specializing in psychic phenomena and the role of spirituality in health and healing
Targ inherited from her father, an active researcher in CIA-sponsored remote viewing experiments, an interest in parapsychology.
Her father, physicist Russell Targ, cofounded the Stanford Research Institute to investigate psychic phenomena. Elisabeth participated in his ESP experiments, and he encouraged her to “remotely view” and predict her birthday presents before she opened them (and claims she was correct most of the time). Elisabeth Targ was an academic superstar. She graduated from high school at age 15, was fluent in Russian, German and French, and eventually graduated from Stanford Medical School”
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Fortunately, Russell Targ is still alive and well and continues to do research and lecture. Below is a youtube video of a lecture Targ did last year. Apparently before satellite technology was developed into a sophisticated means of remote-spying, both the Soviets and the Americans engaged in numerous parapsychological experiments in the area of remote-viewing.
As Targ starts to describe in the video (approximately 8 minutes into it) tasks such as locating fallen Soviet aircraft carrying nuclear weapons, discovering the interior schemes and contents of weapon factories, and similar James Bondish scenarios were given to those inside the secret programs.
All very fascinating! The research still continues today, though spy-satellite technology has gone so far forward that the CIA no longer funds such research. For many, it is more hokus-pokus than science…
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
