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10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Eiffel Tower

There’s a new book out, “Eiffel’s Tower: And the World’s Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count.”
It’s in a relationship.

In 2008, a 36-year-old San Francisco woman, formerly a member of the U.S. Army and a champion archer, “married” the tower and changed her name to Erika La Tour Eiffel.
Way back when, Chrysler stole its thunder.But who’s laughing now?

The tower was the tallest building in the world until the Chrysler Building went up in New York in 1930.

But look at the bottom lines. The tower has been a reliable money-maker. Despite a scandal over 15 workers embezzling ticket revenue, the Paris city agency running the tower reported 2007 operating income of 59.8 million euros and operating profit of 1.5 million euros.

Chrysler? Bankrupt.

One of the views from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Even before it was done, some French big shots decided it was barbarous, stupefying and odious.In 1887, as construction began, composer Charles Gounod, writer Guy de Maupassant, painter William Bouguereau, architect Charles Garnier and scores of other sensitive French creative types signed a petition in protest, labeling the tower “useless and monstrous … a gigantic black factory chimney, its barbarous mass overwhelming and humiliating all our monuments and belittling our works of architecture, which will just disappear before this stupefying folly … this odious column of bolted metal.”

Picture dated March 31, 1889, shows the Eiffel Tower in Paris just after it was built.
It’s more expensive than the one in Las Vegas.

Through March 26, 2010, the cost of an elevator trip to the top of the real Eiffel Tower is 13 euros for an adult. (That’s about $17.25, by current foreign exchange rates.)

Cost of the Eiffel Tower Experience at Paris Las Vegas in Las Vegas: $10 for an adult.
And no, you can’t climb to the top of the tower in Paris. (It’s 1,665 steps, or maybe 1,671, depending on who’s counting.) Also, wheelchair users aren’t allowed at the top.
It outdraws New York’s Empire State Building (pictured), big time.

From 2003 to 2008, the Parisian tower’s annual visitor count grew from 5.9 million to 6.9 million. (The Empire State Building’s operators report “more than 3.5 million” visitors a year.)

The Paris tower is open every day and includes two restaurants. Summer hours are 9 a.m. to 12:45 a.m.
It would make a fine billboard. In fact, it already has.In the late 1920s and early 1930s, three of its sides held vast advertisements for Citroen cars. While occupying Paris during World War II, German troops hung a sign from the tower trumpeting their victory. In 1979, a Greenpeace protester unfurled a sign that said “Save the Seals.”

A company called Apoteo Surprise will flash a personal message under the Eiffel Tower — for a price.
It wasn’t Eiffel’s only big-ticket gig.

By the time engineer and architect Gustave Eiffel began building the tower for the Exposition Universelle of 1889, he had already put up more than 50 bridges in Europe.

He was also a key part of the French effort to build a canal in Panama — an effort that fell through. (Americans redesigned the project and finished the job about 35 years later.)

The tower, meanwhile, took about two years to build, with completion March 31, 1889, several weeks ahead of the exposition’s opening day.
The paint is wet.

Or at least some of it is.

Twenty-five workers began brushwork in March on a top-to-bottom repainting job that’s expected to take 18 months. When done, they will have applied 60 tons of paint in three shades of brown (darkest at the bottom, lightest at the top).

The tower needs repainting every seven years, and it hasn’t always been brown.

For a brief spell in 1899, the tower was painted ochre yellow. And from 1954 to 1961, it was brownish red, a bit like the Golden Gate Bridge.
It suffers from shrinkage.

Not counting its antenna, the iron tower is about 984 feet tall. But on cold days it’s roughly 6 inches shorter.

20 Awesome and Beautiful Images of Earth as Seen From Space

10 Most Strange People on Earth

1 Ngoc: three decades without sleep

Sixty-four-year-old Thai Ngoc, known as Hai Ngoc, said he could not sleep at night after getting a fever in 1973, and has counted infinite numbers of sheep during more than 11,700 consecutive sleepless nights. "I don't know whether the insomnia has impacted my health or not. But I'm still healthy and can farm normally like others," Ngoc said. Proving his health, the elderly resident of Que Trung commune, Que Son district said he can carry two 50kg bags of fertilizer down 4km of road to return home every day. His wife said,

"My husband used to sleep well, but these days, even liquor cannot put him down।" She said when Ngoc went to Da Nang for a medical examination, doctors gave him a clean bill of health, except a minor decline in liver function. Ngoc currently lives on his 5ha farm at the foot of a mountain busy with farming and taking care of pigs and chickens all day. His six children live at their house in Que Trung. Ngoc often does extra farm work or guards his farm at night to prevent theft, saying he used three months of sleepless nights to dig two large ponds to raise fish.

2 Bhagat: had his twin brother on his stomach

Sanju Bhagat's stomach was once so swollen he looked nine months pregnant and could barely breathe. iving in the city of Nagpur, India, Bhagat said he'd felt self-conscious his whole life about his big belly. But one night in June 1999, his problem erupted into something much larger than cosmetic worry. Mehta said that he can usually spot a tumor just after he begins an operation. But while operating on Bhagat, Mehta saw something he had never encountered. As he cut deeper into Bhagat's stomach, gallons of fluid spilled out — and then something extraordinary happened. "First, one limb came out, then another limb came out. Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some limbs, jaws, limbs, hair."

At first glance, it may look as if Bhagat had given birth. Actually, Mehta had removed the mutated body of Bhagat's twin brother from his stomach. Bhagat, they discovered, had one of the world's most bizarre medical conditions — fetus in fetu. It is an extremely rare abnormality that occurs when a fetus gets trapped inside its twin. The trapped fetus can survive as a parasite even past birth by forming an umbilical cordlike structure that leaches its twin's blood supply until it grows so large that it starts to harm the host, at which point doctors usually intervene.

3 Yokoi: spent 28 years hidden after WWII

Shoichi Yokoi was a soldier, conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1941 and sent to Guam shortly thereafter. In 1944, as American forces reconquered the island, Yokoi went into hiding.

On January 24, 1972, Yokoi was discovered in a remote section of Guam by two of the island's inhabitants. For 28 years he had been hiding in an underground jungle cave, fearing to come out of hiding even after finding leaflets declaring that World War II had ended. "It is with much embarrassment that I have returned alive," he said upon his return to Japan, carrying his rusted rifle at his side.

4 Mehran: lives at the Airport since 1988

Mehran Karimi Nasseri, also known as Sir, Alfred Mehran (yes, including the comma), is an Iranian refugee who has been living in the departure lounge of Terminal One in Charles de Gaulle Airport since August 8, 1988. After he was later imprisoned, tortured and expelled from his country, he applied for asylum in many European countries without luck.

When he decided to go to the United Kingdom, he claimed that he was mugged, and his shoulder bag stolen while waiting at the RER platform to go to Charles de Gaulle Airport to take a flight to Heathrow. Nasseri managed to board the plane, but when he arrived at Heathrow without the necessary documentation, Heathrow officials sent him back to Charles de Gaulle. Nasseri was unable to prove his identity or his refugee status to the French officials and so he was moved to the Zone d'attente (waiting zone), a holding area for travellers without papers.

Nasseri was reportedly the inspiration behind the 2004 movie The Terminal. Unlike Tom Hanks' character in the movie, and since at least 1994, Nasseri does not live in the duty-free transit area but simply in the departure hall, in the circular boutiques and restaurants passage on the lowest floor. He can at least theoretically leave the terminal at any moment, although, since everyone knows him, his departure might not remain unnoticed. He does not seem to speak with anyone normally. With his cart and bags, he almost looks like a traveler, so people either do not notice him or ignore him as if he were a homeless person.

5 Mitsuo: a japanese Jesus Christ

Matayoshi Mitsuo is an eccentric Japanese politician with the conviction that he is the God and Christ.According to his program, he will do the Last Judgement as the Christ but the way to do this is totally within the current political system and its legitimacy. His first step as the Savior is to be appointed the prime minister of Japan. Then he will reform Japanese society and then the United Nations should offer him the honor of its General Secretary. Then Matayoshi Jesus will reign over the whole world with two legitimate authorities, not only religious but also political.
He has presented himself in many elections but he has not won yet. He has become well-known for his eccentric campaigns where he urges opponents to commit suicide by hara-kiri.

6 Bihari: most officially dead person

Lal Bihari (born 1961) is a farmer from Uttar Pradesh, India who was officially dead from 1976 to 1994. He founded Mritak Sangh or the Association of the Dead in Uttar Pradesh, India. He fought Indian government bureaucracy for 18 years to prove that he is alive.

When Lal Bihari tried to apply for a bank loan in 1976, he found out that he was officially dead. His uncle had bribed a government official to register him as dead so he would get the ownership of Bihari's land.

Bihari discovered at least 100 other people in a similar situation, being officially dead. He formed Mritak Sangh in the Azamgarh district. He and many other members were in danger of being killed by those who had appropriated their property. Nowadays the association has over 20,000 members all over India. By 2004 they had managed to declare four of their members alive. In 2004 he ran for a seat in the parliament of Lal Ganj.

7 Icke: our salvation from Reptilian Humanoids

David Icke, is a former professional football player, BBC television sports presenter, and British Green Party national spokesperson. Since 1990, he has been what he calls a "full-time investigator into who and what is really controlling the world.": reptilians.

He dresses only in turquoise and sustains that the world was ruled by a secret group called "The Elite": a race of reptilian humanoids, known in ancient times as the Babylonian Brotherhood, and that many prominent people are descended from them, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, and Kris Kristofferson. He believes that descendants of the reptiles engage in child molestation and Satanism. He is the author of 15 books explaining his views. After a five-hour speech to students, he received a standing ovation at the University of Toronto in 1999.

8 Bawden: the self-elected Pope Michael I, from Kansas

David Allen Bawden (born 1959), is an American citizen who was elected "Pope Michael I" by a group of six Conclavist or post-Sedevacantist Catholics, arguing that the elections of the last 6 popes were invalid because they are all modernists.

Sedevacantists argue that if the College of Cardinals will not or cannot elect a valid pope, ordinary Catholics can do so, under the principle of "Epikeia" (Equity). Acting on the basis of this, David Bawden was elected Pope by six people on 1990 (including himself and his parents). He is still on the job to this day.

9 Nakamatsu: photographed and analyzed every meal for 34 years

Yoshiro Nakamatsu (born June 26, 1928), a.k.a. Dr. NakaMats, is the Japanese inventor claiming to hold the world record for number of inventions with over 3,000, including the floppy disk and "PyonPyon" spring shoes. He has being photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting). The goal of Nakamatsu is to live over 140 years old.

10 Lotito: mister eat-it-all

Michel Lotito (born June 15, 1950) is a French entertainer. Lotito, who was born in Grenoble, is famous as the consumer of undigestables, and is known as Monsieur Mangetout (Mister Eat-it-all). Lotito's performances are the consumption of metal, glass, rubber and so on in items such as bicycles, televisions, a Cessna 150, and smaller items which are disassembled, cut-up and swallowed. The aircraft took roughly two years to be 'eaten' from 1978 to 1980. He began eating unusual material while a child and has been performing publicly since 1966.

Lotito does not often suffer from ill-effects due to his diet, even after the consumption of materials usually considered poisonous. When performing he consumes around a kilogram of material daily, preceding it with mineral oil and drinking considerable quantities of water during the 'meal'. He apparently possesses a stomach and intestine with walls of twice the expected thickness, and his digestive acids are, allegedly, unusually powerful, allowing him to digest a certain portion of his metallic meals.

Awesome Lightning Vs Aeroplanes

Lightning striking any object is enough to send shivers down your spine, but when the object is an aeroplane, it’s an event that can shake us to our very bones. Every time a plane plummets from the sky, we are reminded of how precarious flying is for us humans, and the force of lightning seems to highlight how much the heavens’ odds seem stacked against us. Yet exactly what danger does it present to planes?

In the wake of the recent Air France Airbus AF447 disaster – which crashed into the Atlantic carrying 228 people, and whose cause at the time of writing remains unclear – let’s consider the phenomenon of lightning hitting planes, and weigh up how much of a risk it poses to our activities in the air.