Eiffel Tower

MatC · 173238. Thu May 10, 2007 4:46 am

One of the designs for the great Tower, in the competition eventually one by Gustave Eiffel, was for a giant watering can which would have “sprinkled Paris with water on very hot days.” I’d have voted for that, personally. Much better than what Maupassant called “a disgraceful skeleton.”

S: ‘Murder on the Eiffel Tower’ by Claude Izner (Gallic Books, 2007).

Flash · 173287. Thu May 10, 2007 7:41 am

Maybe there's an E for Eyesores topic here? With a possible Elephant in the Room discursion re White Elephants.

eggshaped · 179231. Thu May 31, 2007 1:42 am

Question: Who designed the Statue of Liberty?

Forfeit: Gustav Eiffel

Answer: Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi

Eiffel merely engineered the internal structure of the monument, it was Bartholdi who designed and sculpted the statue. He was supposed to have based the face of the Statue on his mother and the body on his mistress - ugh.

eggshaped · 179234. Thu May 31, 2007 2:15 am

For a year, beginning in 1884, the Statue of Liberty sat in a courtyard belonging to Bartholdi. He'd finished building it, but the pedestal wasn't ready in the US - $100,000 was needed to complete it.

La Monde began a campaign to raise the money which began to pour in. Laxative makers Castoria offered to give $25,000 provided the name of their laxative would be displayed at the top of the statue for a year - the offer was politely declined.

dr.bob · 185602. Wed Jun 27, 2007 4:45 am

We've done the fact about the tower weighing less than the air contained in a cylinder around it, but according to the chief engineer of the tower, interviewed on BBC2's "Paris" last night, if you melted the entire thing down to a cuboid contained within its footprint, it would be only 6cm high.

Jenny · 185865. Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:27 pm

I hope somebody's keeping a note of all this for the F series - surely there must be some other good stuff around France.