page_title: Great Wall of China hoax
section_title: Harry Lee Wilber
hierarchical_section_title: Great Wall of China hoax / Harry Lee Wilber
caption_attribution_description: Source: Oscar B. Olson publisher Web source: http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/cgi-bin/sheetmusic.pl?ColBackToDear&amp;Colorado&amp;main
context_page_description: The Great Wall of China hoax was a faked newspaper story concocted on June 25, 1899 by four reporters in Denver, Colorado about bids by American businesses on a contract to demolish the Great Wall of China and construct a road in its place. The story was reprinted by a number of newspapers.
  In 1939, an urban legend began when Denver songwriter Harry Lee Wilber claimed in a magazine article that the 1899 hoax had ignited the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. The radio commentators Paul Harvey and Dwight Sands perpetuated the legend. Variations have been incorporated into sermons about "the power of the tongue," a morality tale used by preachers to highlight the consequences of lying.
  In fact, however, there was never any such connection and Boxer activity intensified in response to the German invasion in Shandong during March 1899 – before the hoax was invented. No Chinese history reference relates the hoax to the Boxer Rebellion.
  The cultural historian Carlos Rojas comments that the original hoax being perpetuated by a second hoax, a "metahoax," illustrates the ability of the Great Wall to "mean radically different things in different contexts."
context_section_description: The alleged Boxer Rebellion connection originated many years later with Denver songwriter Harry Lee Wilber (1875–1946). Wilber embellished the original tale when he wrote an article "A Fake That Rocked the World," for the North American Review in 1939. Wilber's article claimed that when the "pure canard" reached China, the newspapers there published it with "shouting headlines" and the Boxers, "already incensed, believed the yarn" and "all hell broke loose."
  Wilber's article was reprinted 17 years later in Great Hoaxes of All Time (1956), edited by Robert Medill McBride and Neil Pritchie. Wilber, who composed the music for "Back to Dear Old Denver Town" (1912), was the first manager of the Fox Fullerton Theater (Fullerton, California) after it was constructed in 1924–25. The legend was also told in More of Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story (1981).
caption: The 1899 hoax which began at the Denver train station was expanded in 1939 by Denver songwriter Harry Lee Wilber.
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