Paul Palaiologos Tagaris (c. 1330 – after 1394) was a Byzantine Greek
monk, a swindler, and an impostor. A scion of the Tagaris family, Paul
also claimed a—somewhat dubious—connection with the Palaiologos
dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire at the time. Married as a
teenager, he left his wife and became a monk, but soon his fraudulent
practices embroiled him in scandal. Fleeing Constantinople, he travelled
widely, from Palestine to Persia and Georgia and eventually, via Ukraine
and Hungary, to Italy, Latin Greece, Cyprus and France. During his long
and tumultuous career, Paul was appointed an Orthodox bishop, sold
ordinations to ecclesiastical offices, pretended to be the Orthodox
Patriarch of Jerusalem, switched from Greek Orthodoxy to Roman
Catholicism and back again, supported both the See of Rome and the
Avignon anti-popes in the Western Schism, and managed to be named Latin
Patriarch of Constantinople. In the end, his deceptions unmasked, he
returned to Constantinople, where he confessed his sins before a synod
in 1394.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Palaiologos_Tagaris>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
539 BC:
Cyrus the Great captured Babylon, incorporating the Neo-
Babylonian Empire and making the Achaemenid Empire the largest in the
history of the world to that time.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great>
1792:
Lt. William Broughton, a member of George Vancouver's
expedition, observed a peak in what is now Oregon, U.S., and named it
Mount Hood after British admiral Samuel Hood.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood>
1917:
The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet,
in charge of preparing for and carrying out the Russian Revolution, was
established.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrograd_Military_Revolutionary_Committee>
1960:
The C-46 airliner carrying the Cal Poly Mustangs football team
crashed during takeoff from Toledo Express Airport in Ohio, U.S.,
resulting in 22 deaths.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Poly_football_team_C-46_crash>
1999:
About 10,000 people died when a supercyclone hit the Indian
state of Odisha near the city of Bhubaneswar.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Odisha_cyclone>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
fust:
1. A strong musty smell; mustiness.
2. (architecture) The shaft (main body) of a column.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fust>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The American public highly overrates its sense of humor. We're
great belly laughers and prat fallers, but we never really did have a
real sense of humor. Not satire anyway. … When we realize finally that
we aren't God's given children, we'll understand satire. Humor is really
laughing off a hurt, grinning at misery.
--Bill Mauldin
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Mauldin>