Baron Munchausen was a real German adventurer known for his fondness for tall tales and exaggeration. But the exploits that Rudolf Erich Raspe attributed to him in his book, which he first published in London in 1785, quite clearly drew on folklore and on Raspe's own whimsical inventiveness. The Baron's escapades include a balloon expedition to visit the King of the Moon, an encounter with the goddess Venus, a battle with the Turkish army, and an enormous sea creature who swallows him up in the South Seas.