North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is hugged by children during his visit to Samjiyon County in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang November 28, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/KCNA)

Kazakh girls watch as the Russian Soyuz TMA-15 rocket carrying Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Frank De Winne of Belgium and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko readies for take-off from the Baikonur cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan on May 27, 2009. Three astronauts, from Canada, Belgium and Russia, blasted off for the International Space Station in a landmark mission that will double its crew to six for the first time. (Photo by Dmitry Kostyukov/AFP Photo)

A radiation monitor indicates 114.00 microsieverts per hour near the building housing the plant's No. 4 reactor, center, and an under construction foundation, right, which will store the reactor's melted fuel rods at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, Wednesday, March 6, 2013, ahead of the second anniversary of the March 11, 2011 tsunami and earthquake. Some 110,000 people living around the nuclear plant were evacuated after the massive March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami knocked out the plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. (Photo by Issei Kato/AP Photo/Pool)

Waves crash against the lighthouse in Seaham Harbour, County Durham in northeast England on Friday, November 24, 2023. (Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images)

Photographers gather to take pictures of pilot Andre Borschberg (C) ahead of the take off of Solar Impulse 2-a solar powered plane- in Nanjing, China, May 31, 2015. The world's largest solar-powered airplane, Solar Impulse 2, took off from eastern China's Nanjing on Sunday to continue its round-the-world voyage. The Swiss-made plane left Nanjing's Lukou International Airport at 2:39 in the early morning, with former fighter pilot Borschberg at the controls alone for the entire 8,200-kilometer flight from Nanjing to Hawaii, the toughest leg of its marathon adventure. (Photo by Reuters/Solar Impulse)

The northern lights, or aurora borealis, appear in the sky over the Bamburgh lighthouse at Stag Rock in Northumberland, England on September 28, 2016. (Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Wire via ZUMA Press)

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.

Photographer Brian Finke spent nearly two years traversing the friendly skies, following the life of flight attendants in the air and on the ground, from Delta and Hawaiian Air, to Hooters Air, Southwest, Air France, British Airways, Air Asia, and dozens more. His images of flight attendants waving, applying makeup and deboarding plans while smiling appear as if they were ripped from an advertisement in a glossy magazine. Here: Tiger Airways, Singapore, 2006. (Photo by Brian Finke/The Washington Post)