Flamingos preparing to take flight are reflected on Lake Tuz, which hosts thousands of flamingos every year, in Ankara, Turkiye, on June 24, 2025. This year, the lake has seen a decline in flamingo numbers due to drought, prompting the birds to shift their migration route to other wetlands across Turkiye. (Photo by Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Mother Nesrin Mehre, mourns near the body of Muhammad Mehre was killed in an Israeli attack on al-Nasr neighborhood in northwestern Gaza, on September 23, 2025. His body was taken from al-Shifa Hospital for burial. (Photo by Khames Alrefi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Alaa Shabat lives with her six children in a tent erected inside the Austrian cemetery in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on November 13, 2025, after her husband became ill and unable to work. (Photo by Tariq Mohammad/APAImages/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Do you think that history is a science? Well, not exactly. First, and foremost, history is the state's “legend of wars”, it’s official regalia. Of course, public historians are not interested in scientific truth – quite the opposite. In this respect, any attempt to present a state’s history as altruistic and benevolent as possible is welcomed and encouraged – as opposed to any revisionism attempts that may be more accurate. In this matter, Chinese have surpassed us all – they revised in highly creative manner (but rather shamelessly) the technology already invented by Europeans, a process that resulted in oldest state on the planet. Here is an interesting paradox: ask any sinologist about the Middle Kingdom during second century B.C., and he will describe it to you in such a vivid manner as if he has been living there all his life – but as soon as you will ask him to describe Chinese history in the 19-20th centuries… let's say, his eagerness will be greatly diminished. However, we will discuss China in a different article, and in the meantime we will try to understand how exactly historic “legend of wars” is formed and functions – based on a specific and well-known example. A great example is Ferdinand Magellan's first voyage around the world.

A vendor (C) serves customers at a vegetable market as a commuter train passes in Jakarta October 2, 2015. Indonesia's high annual inflation rate cooled in September and should drop more by year-end, but it likely will be 2016 before the central bank can cut interest rates to help an economy growing at its slowest pace in six years. (Photo by Reuters/Beawiharta)

British visitors wearing Bavarian costumes walk ahead the opening of the traditional Bavarian Oktoberfest festival at the Theresienwiese in Munich, southern Germany, on September 20, 2014. Germany's world-famous Oktoberfest kicks off with millions of revellers set to soak up the frothy atmosphere in a 16-day extravaganza of lederhosen, oompah music and, of course, beer. (Photo by Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP Photo/DPA)

Chris Hondros, a Getty Images photographer, was fatally wounded on April 20, 2011, in a mortar attack by government forces while covering the civil war in Libya. Hondros' work is woven in our history as he covered everything from politics to marathons. A new film will focus on his life as told through his images. Here's a look at some of his finest and final work. Some of these images are graphic in nature

Eight year-old Maya Mohammad Ali Merhi walks using prosthetic legs made by her father from tin cans in a camp for displaced people, in the northern Syrian province of Idlib on June 20, 2018. Maya and her father were both born without lower limbs. Unable to afford real prosthetic limbs, her father made her a pair out of tin cans filled with cotton and scrap pieces of cloth. Maya's family had to leave their home in the Aleppo province to flee battles. (Photo by Aaref Watad/AFP Photo)