I’ve heard it everywhere and so have you, “the Great Wall of China is the only manmade structure that is visible from space.” I’ve heard it twice on the Discovery Channel, once on the Travel Channel, at least a half dozen times in the news, and even from my friend Danny, the one Chinese-American I’ve really been close with over the years. Sadly, it doesn’t make it any more true nor any less ridiculous. Let’s put this legend to bed, you can not see the Great Wall of China from space.

The Great Wall of China is a grand structure, built over a period of as much as 5,000 years. Built, rebuilt, remodeled, added to, borrowed from, respected, appreciated, romanticized and photographed from any of a million angles. Really, it’s an awe inspiring sight, and one I think everyone should see before they die.

But to suggest you can see it from space isn’t just irritating and infuriating to me, it’s insulting to the intelligence of me and all my fellow humans. Come on man, it’s only as wide as a one or two lane road. It’s basically a fence. It’s long, I’ll grant you that, but that doesn’t mean it’s big enough or wide enough to actually see it from space.

The original bit of misinformation came from an 1890’s issue of Popular Science, in which it stated very factually that the Great Wall of China was the only manmade structure that could be seen from space. That would sound like a pretty big claim even today, but in the 1890’s when man was still fifty years out from the first, infantile steps beyond the earth’s atmosphere, it was outright outrageous. There’s simply no way on earth, nor above it, that mankind could have known such a thing in the 1890s.

But still, the myth grew in to common trivia, and even popular idiom and figure of speech, even without any proof or logic.

So let it go already. If you can no more see the Great Wall of China from space than you can see Interstate-90 or your own backyard swimming pool. Satellite imagery says you can see everything these days, and really you can, but that doesn’t set the Great Wall apart from anything else you can build. Hell, I went to Google Earth and saw my dad’s red pickup truck from space, but you don’t see it making any headlines.

I’ll tell you from my own experience flying in to Beijing that, even from 5,000 feet on approach to my final destination, you can barely see the wall, and that’s with a window seat.

So to state the matter as plainly as ever I’ve been able to say anything at all, the Great Wall of China is not the only manmade structure one can see from space. Not outer, not inner, not even low-earth orbit. Come on people, it’s just a wall for crying out loud, long though it may be.

And if I ever hear that myth propagated again on the Discovery Channel, I swear to God I’m going to disconnect my cable as soon as I get home… not before that though, there’s still a few episodes of American Idol I need to catch.