Since her stint in the 2019 Love Island villa, where she made the nation laugh, Irish television personality Maura Higgins has been working as a brand ambassador for Ann Summers. And the 31-year-old has really set pulses racing in her latest edit with the saucy lingerie brand. Available online and in stores from today, December 1, 2021, Maura has looks absolutely stunning in the new Ann Summers Christmas campaign which includes bodysuits and basques, two-piece sets, bras, and thongs in festive hues for the Christmas season. (Photo by Ann Summers/The Mega Agency)

A monkey is being fed by a foreign tourist during the annual Monkey Banquet at Phra Prang Sam Yod ancient temple in Lopburi, some 180km from Bangkok, central Thailand, 24 November 2024. The annual gala has been organized since 1989 by Lopburi's entrepreneur Yongyuth Kitwatananusont, offering all-you-can-eat fruits, vegetables, and desserts for monkeys to honor the long-tailed macaques to attract tourists to visit the town to promote tourism. (Photo by Rungroj Yongrit/EPA)

Law enforcement clashes with demonstrators outside the Metropolitan Detention Center, MDC, in downtown Los Angeles, California on June 8, 2025. US President Donald Trump deployed 2,000 troops on June 7 to handle escalating protests against immigration enforcement raids in the Los Angeles area, a move the state's governor termed “purposefully inflammatory”. Federal agents clashed with angry crowds in a Los Angeles suburb as protests stretched into a second night Saturday, shooting flash-bang grenades and shutting part of a freeway amid raids on undocumented migrants, reports said. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP Photo)

A California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer detains a protestor while clearing a pro-Palestinian encampment after dispersal orders were given at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus, on May 2, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. The camp was declared ‘unlawful’ by the university and over 100 protestors who refused to leave were detained during the operation. Pro-Palestinian encampments have sprung up at college campuses around the country with some protestors calling for schools to divest from Israeli interests amid the ongoing war in Gaza. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

“The saguaro (scientific name Carnegiea gigantea) is a large, tree-sized cactus species in the monotypic genus Carnegiea. It is native to the Sonoran Desert in the U.S. state of Arizona, the Mexican state of Sonora, a small part of Baja California in the San Felipe Desert and an extremely small area of California, U.S. The saguaro blossom is the State Wildflower of Arizona”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Daniel Appel (L), a firefighter with Engine 84 from the Lassen National Forest in California and Mike Hallen, (R), Arizona representative of the National Register of Big Trees, measure the circumference of this Saguaro cactus called the "Grand One," in the Tonto National Forest on July 1, 2005 35 miles north of Phoenix, near Carefree, Arizona. The cactus, estimated to be more than 200 years old, measures a circumference of 7 feet, 10 inches (2.4 meters) and stands 46 feet high (14 meters). The cactus was burned in the Cave Creek Complex fire and may not survive. It was once the largest Saguaro in the world, two others have been found recently that have tied it's measurements. The fire has burned more than 214,000 acres of the Sonoran desert. (Photo by Jeff Topping/Getty Images)

“Igor Sikorsky (May 25, 1889 – October 26, 1972), born Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky was a Russian American pioneer of aviation in both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. He designed and flew the world's first multi-engine fixed-wing aircraft, the Russky Vityaz in 1913, and the first airliner, Ilya Muromets, in 1914. After immigrating to the United States in 1919, Sikorsky founded the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation in 1923, and developed the first of Pan American Airways' ocean-conquering flying boats in the 1930s. In 1939 Sikorsky designed and flew the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, the first viable American helicopter, which pioneered the rotor configuration used by most helicopters today. Sikorsky would modify the design into the Sikorsky R-4, which became the world's first mass-produced helicopter in 1942”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Westland Sikorsky H-5's, used by British European Airways Helicopters, which fly between London and Birmingham. The Sikorsky H-5, (aka R-5, S-51, HO3S-1, or Horse) (R-5 until 1948; company designation VS-327) is a helicopter built by Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, formerly used by the United States Air Force, and its predecessor, the United States Army Air Forces, as well as the United States Navy and United States Coast Guard (with the designations HO2S and HO3S). (Photo by Harrison /Topical Press Agency/Getty Images). 22nd May 1951

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.

“Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara “Claire” (Marquis) and Max Neustädter, a button factory owner. His family was Jewish. Newton attended the Heinrich-von-Treitschke-Realgymnasium and the American School in Berlin. Interested in photography from the age of 12 when he purchased his first camera, he worked for the German photographer Yva (Elsie Neulander Simon) from 1936. The increasingly oppressive restrictions placed on Jews by the Nuremberg laws meant that his father lost control of the factory in which he manufactured buttons and buckles; he was briefly interned in a concentration camp on “Kristallnacht”, November 9, 1938, which finally compelled the family to leave Germany. Newton's parents fled to South America. He was issued with a passport just after turning 18, and left Germany on December 5, 1938. At Trieste he boarded the “Conte Rosso” (along with about 200 others escaping the Nazis) intending to journey to China. After arriving in Singapore he found he was able to remain there, first and briefly as a photographer for the Straits Times and then as a portrait photographer”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Sigourney Weaver by Helmut Newton, 1995.