Having $100 in your pocket would be so much cooler if it was designed by Martin Joubert. He went all out and created a number of different designs for the 100 USD banknotes, ranging from silly to witty. We especially liked the one with “That’s right. This is real money” written on it, showing just how many cups of coffee, basketballs, and guns you can buy with 100 dollars. All in all, even the currency that we have today is nothing but paper, even though it looks official and strict. There is nothing backing it up except for our noble military that ensures that Gulf States sell their oil using only the “green” kind of currency. (Photo by Martin Joubert)

Fisherwomen laying barrels with salt in preparation for herring curing, 1937. (Photo by Topical Press Agency)

Tourists sit around a bonfire on the Makgadikgadi salt pan in Botswana. (Photo by Yang Mengxi/Xinhua News Agency/Barcroft Media)

Route engineer Richard Winter stands in front of a pile of road salt at the Birchanger Depot on November 8, 2011 near Bishop's Stortford, England. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

An aerial view of rock salt collection pool made of tarpaulin, where rock salt is obtained by collecting the natural spring water in the mountains and evaporating the water, in Kozluk District of Batman, Turkiye on August 22, 2022. The production of rock salt, passed down from generation to generation, became the sole source of income for 45 households in the village of Derince, with a population of about 400 of Batman. (Photo by Omer Yasin Ergin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A worker walks through a salt pan on the eve of May Day or Labour Day on the outskirts of the southern Indian city of Chennai April 30, 2014. India is the third largest salt producing country in the world after China and U.S. with global annual production about 230 million tonnes, according to government data. (Photo by Reuters/Babu)

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 couple covered in mud wait for it to dry at the Salt-works lakes near the Black Sea town of Burgas in Bulgaria on July 25, 2019. Thousands of tourists visit the red salt lakes for mud baths, which are believed to help the healing of muscular disorders and rheumatism. (Photo by Nikolay Doychinov/AFP Photo)