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Great Wall myth excised from textbooks

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  • Great Wall myth excised from textbooks

    Great Wall myth excised from textbooks

    BEIJING, China (AP) -- The myth about China's Great Wall has come tumbling down, thanks to the nation's first man in space.

    For decades, the Chinese propagated the myth that their most famous creation was visible from space. Elementary-school textbooks in the world's most populous nation still proclaim that the structure can be seen by the naked eye of an orbiting cosmonaut.

    But the myth was shattered upon Yang Liwei's return from a 21 1/2-hour space jaunt last year, so schoolbooks will be rewritten, the Beijing Times newspaper reported Friday.

    The wall stretches thousands of miles across northern China but is only a few yards wide, making it impossible to see from space.

    A Ministry of Education official in charge of teaching materials for China's schools said the textbook's publisher was informed to stop printing the essay that recounts the falsehood.

    The essay is part of China's standard sixth-grade language and literature textbook, the paper said quoting the official, surnamed Zang.

    It reads: "A cosmonaut rising radiantly said 'Flying in my spaceship, surveying our Earth from space, I am able to make out two constructions with my bare eyes: One is a Dutch sea embankment, the other is China's Great Wall!"'

    The paper said, "Having this falsehood printed in our elementary school textbooks is probably the main cause of the misconception being so widely spread."

    Its report quoted Wang Xiang, a delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the national legislature meeting in Beijing this week.

    During this year's meeting, Wang submitted a proposal to the government asking that school books and school curricula be amended to stop spreading the Great Wall space myth.

    The myth "is a disadvantage to the real knowledge acquired by our elementary school students," Wang was quoted as saying.

    The Web site for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration says that while many manmade objects can be seen from space without magnification, the Great Wall is not among them.

    The wall is not that wide and made from native materials that match the color of the surrounding landscape, the NASA Web site says.

    http://pakistanidefence.ipbhost.com/...t&CODE=00&f=15
    "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

  • #2
    Wow! They're actually taking it out of the books this fast. Would damn near take an act of congress to get it done here.
    No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
    I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
    even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
    He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

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    • #3
      i've heard they can see the millenium dome from space too but is that another myth?
      two wrongs dont make a right but three wrongs do. ;D

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      • #4
        Must be true. It is on the start of EastEnders :)
        at

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