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." Background The hoax was created at the height of imperialism during late 19th Century. In 1898, Britain obtained a 99-year lease for the New Territories, extending the Hong Kong colony that had been ceded in 1841. Britain also sent a fleet into the Bohai Sea and forced the Chinese to lease Weihaiwei. Germany seized the Chinese port of Qingdao and used it for a military base. The French leased Guangzhouwan from China. Also, in the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan defeated China. Xenophobia in China was widespread. Beginning The hoax began with four Denver newspaper reporters, Al Stevens, Jack Tournay, John Lewis, and Hal Wilshire, who represented the four Denver newspapers—the Post, the Republican, the Times, and the Rocky Mountain News. The four met by chance at Denver Union Station where each were waiting in hopes of spotting someone of prominence who could become a subject for a news story. Seeing no celebrities and frustrated with no story in sight and deadlines due, Stevens remarked, "I don't know what you guys are going to do, but I'm going to fake it. It won't hurt anybody, so what the Devil." The other three men agreed to concoct a story and walked on 17th Street toward the Oxford Hotel to discuss possible ideas. Some stories,