Top 20 Amazing Facts About Eiffel Tower | Amazing Facts 4U
- The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 Paris World fair as the entrance arch and amazingly it was not intended to be permanent.
- The blueprints for the Eiffel Tower covered more than 14,000 square feet of drafting paper.
- It is named after Gustave Eiffel, a French civil engineer, whose company was in charge of the project. However, it was actually two lesser-known men, Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier, who came up with the original drawings for the monument.
- The French name for the Eiffel Tower is La Tour Eiffel, it also has the nickname La dame de fer which means the iron lady.
- The Eiffel Tower was originally intended for Barcelona, Spain, but the project was rejected.
- The construction of the wrought-iron tower began in July 1887. The amazing fact is that a group of 300 artists, sculptors, writers, and architects sent a petition to the commissioner of the Paris Exposition, pleading him to halt construction of the “ridiculous tower”. The petition was rejected and work was completed in 2 years.
- The Eiffel Tower is 324 meters (1063 feet) in height (Without the antenna, 984 feet (300 m)) and was the tallest man-made structure in the world for 41 years before being surpassed by the Chrysler Building in New York in 1930.
- The Eiffel Tower has 108 stories, with 1,710 steps. However, visitors can only climb stairs to the first platform. There are two elevators. One elevator travels an amazing distance of 64,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) a year.
- Each of the 18,000 pieces used to build the tower was calculated specifically for the project and prepared in Eiffel’s factory on the outskirts of Paris.
- Building the tower required an amazing 2.5 million thermally assembled rivets. Workers painted every inch of the structure that required 60 tons of paint.
- The Eiffel Tower is made of iron and weighs around 10000 tonnes.
- The first platform is 190 feet above the ground, the second platform is 376 feet, and the third platform is almost 900 feet up. The tower’s three platforms are home to two restaurants, several buffets, a banquet hall, a champagne bar, and many unique gift shops.
- There are amazing 5 billion lights on the Eiffel-Tower.
- Amazingly around 50 tonnes of paint are added to the Eiffel-Tower every 7 years to protect it from rust.
- There was a proposal to demolish the Eiffel Tower in 1909, but it was decided that it can be used as a giant radio antenna. The French military used the tower to communicate wirelessly with ships in the Atlantic Ocean and intercept enemy messages during World War I. The tower still has more than 120 antennas, broadcasting both radio and television signals throughout the capital city and beyond.
- During WWII, when Hitler visited Paris, amazingly the French cut the lift cables on the Eiffel-Tower so that Hitler would have to climb the steps if he wanted to reach the top.
- The amazing fact is that the Eiffel Tower is the most-visited paid monument in the world. Nearly 7 million people visit it every year.
- The height of the Eiffel Tower varies by 6 inches (15 cm) due to temperature changes.
- Inventor Franz Reichelt died by jumping from the Eiffel Tower while testing a parachute of his own design.
- Con artist Victor Lustig “sold” the Eiffel Tower to a scrap metal dealer.
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