Baron Munchausen
Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Baron von Münchhausen (May 11, 1720 - February 22, 1797) was a German nobleman who served in the Russian army against the Turks, about which he is supposed to have told outrageously tall tales.
These stories were collected and published, in English, in 1785, by Rudolf Erich Raspe: The Surprising Adventures Of Baron Munchausen. However, much of the humorous material in them is borrowed from other sources.
According to the stories, the Baron had astounding abilities such as ride cannonballs, travel to the moon, and pull himself from the ocean by his own bootstraps.
In 1943 this was in turn adapted into a German language film Münchhausen directed by Josef von Báky. Terry Gilliam adapted the stories into the 1998 film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.