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Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Baron Munchausen

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Baron Munchausen

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This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page.

The result was: scheduled for Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 29, 2016 by  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 12:06, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Image of Baron Munchausen by Gustave Dore

Baron Munchausen is a fictional German nobleman created by German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe in his 1785 book Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. The character is loosely based on a real baron, Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen (1720–1797). Born in Bodenwerder, Electorate of Brunswick-Luneburg, the real-life Münchhausen fought for the Russian Empire in the Russo-Turkish War. After retiring in 1760, he became a minor celebrity within German aristocratic circles for telling outrageous tall tales based on his military career. After hearing some of Münchhausen's stories, Raspe adapted them anonymously into literary form, first in German as ephemeral magazine pieces and then in English. The fictional Baron's exploits, narrated in the first-person, focus on his impossible achievements as a sportsman, soldier, and traveller, for instance riding on a cannonball, fighting a forty-foot crocodile, and travelling to the Moon. The real-life Münchhausen was deeply upset at the development of a fictional character bearing his name, and threatened legal proceedings against the book's publisher. The character had several medical conditions and other concepts named after him, including Munchausen syndrome, the Münchhausen trilemma, and Munchausen numbers. (Full article...)