The Iron Lady of Paris: The Eiffel Tower Opens
1889 · event
Paris's artists called it a "useless and monstrous" factory chimney and demanded it be torn down after its twenty-year permit. Gustave Eiffel's 300-metre tower, the tallest structure on Earth for four decades, was saved by an antenna: it proved too useful for the new miracle of radio to demolish.
Eighteen thousand iron pieces, two and a half million rivets, assembled in twenty-six months with astonishing precision and only one construction death, engineering audacity that made the impossible look elegant.
The temporary tower became the permanent symbol of its city, the most-visited paid monument in the world, and shorthand for romance on every continent. The artists were wrong; the chimney turned out to be a love letter.