1921: "The Moon and the Great Wall"

[Hiferator]

Title text: And arguably sunspots, on rare occasions. But even if they count, it takes ideal conditions and you might hurt your eyes.

The great wall is not on it, but here's a list of man-made stuff you can actually see from the moon: Link

(Created with chridd's thread formatter.)

[rhomboidal]

The Great Crater of the Moon was made to keep out invading Martians. Super true.

[Brian-M]

[url=https://xkcd.com/1921/]The great wall is not on it, but here's a list of man-made stuff you can actually see from the moon:

So the only man-made stuff you can see from the moon is the man-made stuff that's actually on the moon itself? Makes sense.

[cellocgw]

Pfooey. Everyone knows that The Great Wall is actually a coded message to a marooned space alien.

[DanD]

Lake Nasser is visible from the moon (in an earthrise photo taken by the LRO). I would presume multiple other man made lakes are, as well. Cities, as a unit, are visible on the night side.

[xtifr]

Did you know that if you're standing on the Great Wall of China, you can see the Great Wall of China?

Which is a man-made structure located on the third celestial body orbiting the star known as Sol.

[eidako]

Great Wall of China...is a man-made structure located on the third celestial body orbiting the star known as Sol.

I came here to make a similar observation, but since you got to it first, I'm going to go with the contrarian route.

pertaining to the sky or visible heaven, or to the universe beyond the earth’s atmosphere, as in celestial body.

A natural object which is located outside of Earth's atmosphere, such as the Moon, the Sun, an asteroid, planet, or star.

But then Merriam-Webster chose to be contrarian to that argument.

an aggregation of matter in the universe that constitutes a unit (as a planet, nebula) for astronomical study

[DavidSh]

It seems to me like you are missing the obvious, if obsolete, meaning of "Celestial", as pertaining to Imperial China.

[Hiferator]

Lake Nasser is visible from the moon (in an earthrise photo taken by the LRO). I would presume multiple other man made lakes are, as well. Cities, as a unit, are visible on the night side.

Ah, you're right, you would have gotten me there, but luckily, I did not write "all man-made stuff you can [...] see from the moon". On the other hand, to make the great wall myth sound more exiting/exceptional, it is usually stated in a manner that excludes those examples, like "individual man-made structure" or something.

It seems to me like you are missing the obvious, if obsolete, meaning of "Celestial", as pertaining to Imperial China.

There's potential for an advanced pun somewhere in there, but I can't quite find it.