A performer takes part in a street parade as part of the opening ceremony of the Ibero-American Theater Festival in Bogota, Colombia, March 12, 2016. (Photo by John Vizcaino/Reuters)

Piper Hoppe, 10, from Minnetonka, Minnesota, holds a sign at the doorway of River Bluff Dental clinic in protest against the killing of a famous lion in Zimbabwe, in Bloomington, Minnesota July 29, 2015. A Zimbabwean court on Wednesday charged a professional local hunter Theo Bronkhorst with failing to prevent an American from unlawfully killing “Cecil”, the southern African country's best-known lion. The American, Walter James Palmer, a Minnesota dentist who paid $50,000 to kill the lion, has left Zimbabwe. He says he did kill the animal but believed the hunt was legal and that the necessary permits had been issued. (Photo by Eric Miller/Reuters)

In this June 29, 2018 photo, a wild horse shakes off dust near a watering hole outside Salt Lake City. Harsh drought conditions in parts of the American West are pushing wild horses to the brink and forcing extreme measures to protect them. (Photo by Rick Bowmer/AP Photo)

Barbara Peacock is one of five recipients of the Getty Images annual Grants for Editorial Photography programme, which gives photojournalists an award of $10,000 as well as the agency’s support in pursuing projects of their choosing. American Bedroom is an ongoing series of portraits in which she explores the complexities and idiosyncrasies of contemporary American life. Here: Jessica, Milford, New Hampshire: “Sometimes life throws you in all sorts of directions. The most important part about life is to remember you are exactly where you need to be”. (Photo by Barbara Peacock/Recipient of the Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography 2017)

A young evacuee of Japanese ancestry waits with the family baggage before leaving by bus for an assembly center in California, in this April 1942 handout photo. February 19, 2017 marks the 75th anniversary of FDR signing executive order 9066, authorizing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two. (Photo by Courtesy Clem Albers/Department of the Interior/War Relocation Authority/National Archives/Reuters)

Two working girls entertaining themselves in the absence of customers at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel owned by Dennis Hof, in Lyon County, one of the fews counties in the USA which permits legalized prostitution. (Photo by Stephan Gladieu/Getty Images)

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 David Emitt Adams creates tintypes on discarded cans he collects from the Sonoran Desert. In his artist statement, Adams says that some are more than four decades old, which have earned a deep reddish-brown, rusty coloration. (Photo by David Emitt Adams)