A fact from François Thurot appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 10 December 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that in 1759, François Thurot's ship set out to create a diversion from an invasion of Britain only to learn, after months of storms and starvation, that the invasion fleet had been defeated before it even left France?
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Latest comment: 16 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
This one's going to take a bit of work. The first version is cobbled together from sources which frankly contradict each other in many respects; I hope that when I get time to delve more closely into the primary sources I'll be able to figure out which secondary sources are the most reliable. Either way, I'll attach some sort of references to the article over the next few days. David Trochos (talk) 00:42, 30 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
Sure enough, it has taken a bit of work, and I'm still not happy. In particular, if anybody has access to Durand's fictitious 1760 biography "Genuine and Curious Memoirs of the Famous Captain Thurot", it would be useful if they could identify stories which seem to have originated there and appear in this article. BTW I've deliberately made the article very detailed, in the hope that some bits can be removed as fictitious. David Trochos (talk) 00:59, 5 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
In their book Captain Francois Thurot by Young, G.V.C. and Foster, Caroline, Mansk Svenska Pub.Co. 1986 they say that the background details are very obscure. ClemMcGann (talk) 19:51, 27 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
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