Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 October 29

Baron Munchausen is a fictional 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-Lüneburg, the real-life Münchhausen fought for the Russian Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739. 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 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. Several concepts and medical conditions have been named after the character, including Munchausen syndrome, the Münchhausen trilemma, and Munchausen numbers. (Full article...)

• ... that the dairy-farming area of Warmingham, Cheshire, is the source of around half the pure salt (brine pump pictured) manufactured in the UK?
• ... that Revival stars a character that writer Tim Seeley had spent nearly 20 years developing?
• ... that basketball player Anthony Stover sacrificed a higher salary in hopes of winning an NBL Canada championship?
• ... that 2-satisfiability can be used to schedule round-robin tournaments so that teams alternate between home and away games as much or as little as possible?
• ... that Shriya Saran played the female lead in the 2007 film Sivaji, India's most expensive film to that point?
• ... that parts of the Altiplano may have been covered by the lake Ouki in the past?
• ... that former German ambassador to China Erwin Wickert was an alumnus of Dickinson College of Carlisle, Pennsylvania?
• ... that the tail of Laticauda colubrina resembles and moves like its head in order to deter predators?

• Yazidi human rights activists Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar win the Sakharov Prize.
• More than 60 people are killed in an attack on a police training centre in Quetta, Pakistan.
• At least 70 people are killed and around 600 others injured in a train derailment in Cameroon.
• Numerous media outlets, social networks, and retailers go offline in parts of North America and Europe during a large-scale denial-of-service cyberattack.
• The ESA–Roscosmos ExoMars mission's Trace Gas Orbiter enters orbit around Mars, but contact is lost with the Schiaparelli lander during its descent to the planet's surface.

October 29: Diwali in South India (2016); Republic Day in Turkey (1923)

• 1618 – English courtier and explorer Walter Raleigh was executed in London after King James I reinstated a fifteen-year-old death sentence against him.
• 1792 – Lt. William Broughton, a member of Captain George Vancouver's discovery expedition, observed a peak in what is now Oregon, US, and named it Mount Hood (pictured) after British admiral Samuel Hood.
• 1948 – Arab–Israeli War: As the Israel Defense Forces captured the Palestinian Arab village of Safsaf, they massacred at least 52 villagers.
• 1986 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opened the last segment of the M25 motorway, one of Britain's busiest motorways.
• 1991 – Galileo became the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid when it made a flyby of 951 Gaspra.

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Oedipus and the Sphinx is an 1864 oil-on-canvas painting by Gustave Moreau that depicts the meeting between Oedipus and the Sphinx on the road to Delphi. The painting was first exhibited at the French Salon of 1864, where it was an immediate success. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Painting: Gustave Moreau