2015-12-24 Thu

On December 24th in 2000, in Tehran, Viswanathan Anand won the FIDE World Chess Championship and became the first Indian to win this title!

In 1988, at the age of 18, he became India's first Grandmaster by winning the Shakti Finance International chess tournament held in Coimbatore, India. He was awarded Padma Shri at the age of eighteen.
He was also the first recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1991–92, India's highest sporting honour.
In 2007, he was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, making him the first sports person to receive the award.

Such a Legendary Indian Chess Grandmaster and former World Chess Champion is honoured on the stamps of countries worldwide!

Rwanda, a landlocked country in East Africa, has Vishwanathan Anand depicted on its stamp denomination value 7 Rwandan Franc.

Also numerous commemorative stamps that depict Chess champions like Vladimir Kramnik, Garry Kasparov, and Viswanathan Anand are issued by countries like Bilbao, Republic of Central Africa, Republic of Guinea, Solomon Islands, Chad, Benin, Maldives, Nigeria, Burundi, and Mozambique.

All of these stamp pay tribute to some of the most famous Chess Grand Masters.