Gustave Eiffel Born: Builder of Paris's Iron Icon
Gustave Eiffel was born in December 1832 in Dijon. He's most famous for the tower, but before the tower he built the interior structure of the Statue of Liberty. The iron skeleton that allows Lady Liberty to hold her arm up — that's Eiffel's engineering. His tower for the 1889 Paris World's Fair was supposed to be temporary, a 20-year structure. It was 300 meters tall, the highest man-made structure on earth for forty years. Parisians called it the iron eyesore. Maupassant allegedly ate lunch at its restaurant daily because it was the one place in Paris where he couldn't see it.
December 15, 1832
194 years ago
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