“Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev was a Russian Tatar dancer from the former Soviet Union, primarily known for his work in ballet. Nureyev's artistic skills explored expressive areas of the dance, providing a new role to the male ballet dancer who once served only as support to the women. He defected to the West, despite KGB efforts to stop him. According to KGB archives studied by Peter Watson, Nikita Khrushchev personally signed an order to have Nureyev killed”.

Photo: British ballerina Margot Fonteyn (Margaret Hookham) (1919 – 1991) and her professional partner during his tenure with the Royal Ballet Rudolf Nureyev. (Photo by Potter/Express/Getty Images). 12th December 1965. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

Geordie Shore babe Chantelle Connelly enjoys a wild night out in Benidorm, Spain on September 20, 2016 which ended at a strip club with a group of girls for her sisters birthday. (Photo by Danny Ryan/iCelebTV.com)

Mel Winnie Harlow poses for photographers before the presentation of Christian Dior's Spring-Summer 2018 ready-to-wear fashion collection in Paris, Tuesday, September 26, 2017. (Photo by Michel Euler/AP Photo)

The New World porcupine, family Erethizontidae, 1280 Gram born at 11 April 2015 Inventory in Zoo. Counting trade Fairs Weighing the Zoo is at 7 May 2015 too the 108 Birthday Zoo Hagenbeck Hamburg, Germany. (Photo by Imago/ZUMA Wire)

WWII veterans attend a ceremony to place tobacco pouches of soil from WWII mass graves of Red Army soldiers abroad, in the custody of the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow, Russia on March 6, 2020. The grave soil has been brought from Abkhazia, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, US, Ukraine, France, Estonia, Mongolia, Bulgaria, UK, Uzbekistan and South Ossetia. (Photo by Alexander Shcherbak/TASS)

Fishermen use traditional cone-shaped nets on Inle lake in Myanmar in February 2022. The men steer their boats with an oar that they control with their feet. They throw the net into the water and push it down so it sinks to the bottom, then drag it back to the surface with the fish trapped inside. (Photo by Alahattin Kanlioglu/Solent News)

“Eye of a toad”. Animal Portraits, Łukasz Bożycki, Poland. Early spring sees a pond near Łukasz’s home city of Warsaw, Poland, full of mating frogs and a few toads. On this March day, Łukasz shared the pond with them for an evening, sitting in the icy water in his chest-high waders, keeping as still as possible, despite the numbing cold, so that the amphibians could get used to him. “I wanted to find a fresh way of portraying the amphibians”, he says, “at water level”. Using a telephoto lens, he focused on one lone toad and waited for the sun to dip almost below the horizon before pressing the shutter, using flash to bring out the details in the shadow. His prize was “the glorious pool of sunset colour” and fiery glow of the toad’s eye. Nikon D80 + 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens + extension tube; 1/125 sec at f9 (-2.3 e/v); ISO 100; built-in flash. (Photo by Łukasz Bożycki)

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.