by Andrew Cai

Created on: November 26, 2009

The Eiffel Tower, the symbol of hope for the French people in the 20th century and beyond, has some interesting facts that should be known. For instance, the construction period of the tower took only two years and yet was the tallest building in the world until 1930! The facts of the Eiffel Tower are what make this monument so interesting.

Technical information:

250 rivets make up the Tower along with 15,000 pieces of iron. There are 1,665 steps to the top and not 1,792 steps representing the year of the First French Republic. On a windy day, the tower can sway at a maximum of 13 cm. 18,000 components made up the tower and all of the parts used were made in a factory and then brought to the construction site.

Accidents:

Throughout the entire construction period, only one man died since Eiffel was very strict on safety. The cause of this sole accident was since the worker was showing off to his girlfriend on the first platform and fell. Therefore, this death was not work-related. More deaths occur on the Eiffel tower due to suicides and an average of four people a year hang themselves from the tower or jump to their deaths. The Tower was the most popular place to commit suicide in France. The first suicide occurred in 1911 when a tailor made some wings and thought he could fly. He didn't.

The mastermind behind it all:

Gustave Eiffel had to build the tower in a limited amount of time and he had to do it without any knowledge of previous attempts. Basically, he was building the tallest iron tower of his time without being able to learn from other towers built before his. Plus, the limited amount of time made things even harder. To compare with another monument, the Washington Monument, which is half the size of the Eiffel Tower, was completed in 36 years.

Construction:

The construction was actually split into four different construction areas, one for each of the legs. The legs were to meet at the 180 ft. point at which time a perfectly horizontal platform would be constructed. To avoid error, Eiffel installed temporary hydraulic pistons that would enable him to "fine tune" the tower if needed. It turned out that this was really unnecessary since the greatest error was one of the four legs being 2.5 inches out of alignment. To this day, the Eiffel Tower stands perfectly vertical.

Unique stunts:

The Eiffel Tower was scaled by a mountaineer in 1954, had two Englishmen parachute off it in 1984, and had journalist Pierre Labric descend the tower on a bike in 1923.

Learn more about this author, Andrew Cai.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.