Historia e a Estoria: History and A Story

Historia, is history in Portuguese. Estoria is a story. In Portuguese, these words are homonyms, and because of this,  I began to overanaylze their relationship, as I am prone to do. It is quite interesting, to say the least, the intrinsic connection between the two, when one thinks about it. History is what happened in the past: it is supposedly factual, concrete and indisputable. Oppositely, stories are narratives, "either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer" as defined by dictionary.com. Yet history isn't as incontestable as your history teacher makes you believe.  History can be a story, it can be distorted and viewed from differing perspectives. It can be told differently. For instance, the Civil War isn't always referred to as the Civil War, inside or outside the United States. In the South, it is called The War Between the States and, and in Brazil, it is called "A Guerra Civil Americana." Details can be lost in retellings, in faulty memories, in lack of primary sources. History depends on where and when you live, and it is the story of the past based on what the teller knows. History and Stories, they aren't as dissimilar as they initially appear.
 It must also be remarked the effect of stories, of words and literature, on history -  or history as we know it. Just from the colonial times, if Common Sense, if Patrick Henry's Speech In The Virginia Convention, if all the the pamphlets that helped the constitution pass, hadn't existed, would the United States stand as it does today? The domino effect says that even miniscule differences in time would have major effects, but I believe the nation would be especially be astronomically different if literature, if these stories, hadn't existed. Literature is essential to not only the social structure of today, but to the memory of the past and the lessons they hold that must be taught to each generation to come.