On August 31, 2012, a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. (Photo by NASA/GSFC/SDO via The Atlantic)

Leaves and forest foliage claim abandoned motors at makeshift car graveyards. German photographer Dieter Klein travels the world to find vintage automobiles left to rust in leafy forests and fields. Here: Seemingly camouflaged cars are stacked on top of each other causing them to blend in with the landscape, in 2013, France. (Photo by Dieter Klein/Barcroft Media)

Contorsionist Rich Miteku performs during the opening of the 41st Monte-Carlo International Circus Festival in Monaco on January 19, 2017. (Photo by Valery Hache/AFP Photo)

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.

Takeoka Chisaka, Hiroshima, Japan. “One morning in August 1945, I was walking home from the night shift at a factory in Hiroshima. As I reached my door, there was a huge explosion. When I came to, my head was bleeding and I had been blasted 30m away. The atomic bomb had detonated. When I found my mother, her eyes were badly burned. A doctor said they had to come out, but he didn’t have the proper tools so used a knife instead. It was hellish. I became a peace-worker after the war. In the 1960s, at a meeting at the UN, I met one of the people who created the atomic bomb. He apologised”. (Photo and caption by Sasha Maslov)

A demonstrator jumps from a vehicle of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) during a protest to demand what protesters say is true information from the OSCE about the shelling in Donetsk, Ukraine (since April 2014, the city is the administrative centre of the Donetsk People's Republic), July 23, 2015. The graffiti reads, “Stop moronic war!”. (Photo by Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

Ary Borges feeds his tiger named Dan at his home in Maringa, Brazil, Thursday, September 26, 2013. Borges is in a legal battle with federal wildlife officials to keep his endangered animals from undergoing vasectomies and being taken away from him. He defends his right to breed the animals and says he gives them a better home than they might find elsewhere in Brazil. (Photo by Renata Brito/AP Photo)

A boy stands at the door of a 60-year-old cable car in the town of Chiatura, some 220 km (136 miles) northwest of Tbilisi, September 12, 2013. (Photo by David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters)