The Adventures of Tintin is a comic book series created by Belgian artist Hergé. The series first appeared in 1929 in a children's supplement to the French-language Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. Set in a painstakingly researched world closely mirroring reality, The Adventures of Tintin presents colourful characters in distinctive, well-realised settings. The hero of the series is the eponymous Tintin, a young reporter and traveller aided in his adventures by his faithful dog Snowy. The success of the series saw serialised strips collected into albums, spun into a successful magazine, and adapted for both film and theatre. The series is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, with translations published in over 50 languages and more than 200 million copies of the books sold to date. The comic strip series has long been admired for its clean, expressive drawings, done in Hergé's signature ligne claire style. The Adventures of Tintin straddles a variety of genres, from mysteries to political thrillers to science fiction. Stories always feature slapstick humour, offset in later albums by sophisticated satire and political and cultural commentary.

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1477: Charles the Bold died at the Battle of Nancy, leading to the annexation of Burgundy by France. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I%2C_Duke_of_Burgundy)

1527: Felix Manz, a leader of the Anabaptist congregation in Zürich, was executed by drowning. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Manz)

1968: Alexander Dubček came to power in Czechoslovakia, beginning a political reform known as "Socialism with a human face". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Dub%C4%8Dek)

2005: Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, was discovered by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken in 2003 at the Palomar Observatory. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_(dwarf_planet))

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. -- Principia Discordia (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Principia_Discordia)