A horse is evacuated as the Canyon Fire burns in brush-filled hillsides in Castaic, California, 07 August 2025. The Canyon Fire near Lake Piru, a reservoir about 60 miles northwest of downtown LA, has forced thousands to evacute and has grown to more than 1,000 acres according to Cal Fire. (Photo by Allison Dinner/EPA)

Kenya's Reynold Cheruiyot (centre L) and Britain's athlete Jake Wightman fall after crossing the finish line in the men's 1500m final during the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo on September 17, 2025. (Photo by Jewel Samad/AFP Photo)

Mahouts return home with their elephants carrying grass to feed them on the eve of the rhino census in Kaziranga National Park in Assam state, India, 24 March 2015. Kaziranga will be closed to visitors for the next two days for a census of the rhinos commencing 25 March, in a previous census in 2013 in the park the population of the Indian rhinos was 2329. (Photo by EPA/Stringer)

Indian Muslim devotees travel in an auto rickshaw during the Urs festival in Ajmer, India, Thursday, April 23, 2015. Thousands of devotees from different parts of India travel to the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chisht for the annual festival marking the saint's death anniversary. (Photo by Deepak Sharma/AP 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.

Alluvial Fan, China. A vast alluvial fan blossoms across the desolate landscape between the Kunlun and Altun mountain ranges that form the southern border of the Taklimakan Desert in China’s XinJiang Province. Image taken by the ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite on May 2nd, 2002. (Photo by NASA/GSFC/USGS EROS Data Center)

U.S. Marines, left, and South Korean Marines, wearing blue headbands on their helmets, take positions after landing on the beach during the joint military combined amphibious exercise, called Ssangyong, part of the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle military exercises, in Pohang, South Korea, Saturday, March 12, 2016. North Korea said Saturday its military is ready to pre-emptively attack and “liberate” the South in its latest outburst against the annual joint military drills by the United States and South Korea. (Photo by Kim Jun-bum/Yonhap via AP Photo)

British Waters Wide Angle category runner-up. Grass snake swimming along a garden pond by Jack Perks (UK)in Nottinghamshire, UK. “I’m always on the lookout for unusual freshwater subjects and grass snakes are a species I’ve been after for years. I was told about a pond where the odd grass snake hangs around the lilly pads for frogs. I put my drysuit on and got into the water and could see one slithering along the surface. Slowly making my way towards it with my head only just poking above I got the spilt shot”. (Photo by Jack Perks/Underwater Photographer of the Year 2019)