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Google Doodle honors Lyudmila Rudenko, chess champion and savior of children

Lyudmila Rudenko became famous by taking down kings and queens, but she is mostly known for helping to save the lives of children at the period of the World War II.

Google Doodle honors Lyudmila Rudenko

The Soviet chess master also helped her to organdie the way for women in the sport, becoming the world’s second women’s chess champion in 1950, the same year she rewarded the title of International Master.

In order To honor her achievements and the several titles Rudenko collected, Google dedicated its Doodle on this Friday to the chess champ on the occasion of her 114th birthday.

Born in 1904 in Lubny (now part of the Ukraine), Rudenko started learning chess from her father at the age of 10 and at the age of 25th she took part in the Chess tournament in order to play the game.

she earned a degree in economics and focused more on competitive swimming than chess, During that gap But in chess she was also becoming a champion in the 400-meter breaststroke in Odessa.

At the beginning of World War II, in Leningrad, Rudenko went to work at an armament factory. at what time the factory workers were evacuated to another city hundreds of miles away, the children of many workers were left behind and Rudenko literally helped those kids to survived on that period.

Rudenko was put in charge of evacuating the workers’ children, As the Siege of Leningrad began. She organized a special train that removed the children before the military blockade tightened in the whole town.

In spite her success as a chess champion, Rudenko said that this was her life’s most important achievement.

Rudenko died in 1986 at the age of 81 in Leningrad, now known as St. Petersburg, Russia. in 2015, She was inducted into the Chess Hall of Fame.

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