Glam revellers have proudly shown off their vaccine passports as they glammed up for a night on the town on the first day of fresh Covid restrictions in Newcastle, United Kingdom on December 15, 2021. Brits donning festive gear decided to tear up nightclub dance floors and booze in pubs despite fears over the Omicron variant. (Photo by Newcastle New Projects)

A woman wearing a protective mask walks outside a church in Mandaluyong, east of Manila, Philippines on Sunday, February 2, 2020. The Philippines on Sunday reported the first death of a new virus outside of China, where authorities delayed the opening of schools in the worst-hit province and tightened quarantine measures in another that allow only one family member to venture out to buy supplies. (Photo by Aaron Favila/AP Photo)

A woman pushes a child aboard a plastic basin as they wade through floodwaters brought about by Super Typhoon Noru on September 26, 2022 in San Miguel, Bulacan province, Philippines. Super Typhoon Noru made landfall in the Philippines overnight, causing widespread flooding and leaving at least five dead. High winds and heavy rains have flattened villages and have increased the threat of landslides. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

A passenger jeepney commutes through a flooded street in Manila on September 5, 2024, caused by heavy rains due to the southwest monsoon influenced by Tropical Storm Yagi which hit the main island of Luzon on September 2. (Photo by Ted Aljibe/AFP 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.

A dead red-tailed monkey hangs by its tail above the ground, in order to keep it away from ants, in the forest near the city of Mbandaka, Democratic Republic of the Congo, April 5, 2019. Bushmeat hunters are emptying Central Africa's forests at a high rate, researchers say. A growing appetite for wild meat in cities has ramped up the scale of hunting. Research shows around 6 million tonnes of bushmeat are sourced annually from the Congo Basin, whose forest spans across six countries and is second in size only to the Amazon. (Photo by Thomas Nicolon/Reuters)

A combination picture shows Will Adam, 14, snowboarding down a street on Beacon Hill during a large winter blizzard in Boston, Massachusetts, United States January 27, 2015 (top), and a woman looking at her phone as she walks down the same street June 13, 2015. Outdoor scenes in Boston show local residents enjoying balmy weather amid lush greenery as the summer solstice approaches on 21 June. The very same locations suffered heavy snowstorms last winter, with snow ploughs, skiers and snowboarders battling the drifts. Boston got 275.8 cm of snow over the winter, the most since 1872, when records began. A few months after the snowstorms, Brian Snyder revisited the same places and shot pictures at exactly the same locations. (Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters)

In this photo taken on Monday, October 27, 2014, a cactus stands at a broken window in a damaged house after shelling not far from Donetsk airport in the town of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. Donetsk, which has lost about 400,000 of its 1 million pre-war population, is bracing to a winter ahead. In a climate like eastern Ukraine's, where temperatures typically stay below zero all winter, the damage to the critical infrastructure and lack of effort to provide adequate shelter to people whose homes were destroyed could literally mean a death from the cold. (Photo by Dmitry Lovetsky/AP Photo)