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Check this out! Have you ever entered a contest? And if so, have you ever won the contest? Here’s one contest that a man entered and won, making his name one of the most well known throughout the world. In 1886 the World Fair committee announced a contest for a design of a tower which would be built for the World’s Exhibition in 1889. Over 100 designs were submitted, but the winner was Gustave Eiffel. Does that name sound familiar to you?

His design was a huge tower that stood 1000 feet tall! The actual construction of the tower took place in January 1887 and took a record time of two years, two months and five days to complete. To build the tower, they used 18000 pieces of metal and 2,500,000 rivets to hold all of the parts together. The tower weighs 10100 tons and it has 1665 steps leading up to the top. (That’s a pretty good workout!). It was presented at the World’s Exhibition as the Eiffel Tower and over two million people visited it. At the time is was the tallest building in the world.

Today, the Eiffel Tower also has a radio antenna on it and to date it has had over 180 million visitors. It’s also a monument of the World Expo, a point for collecting meteorological data, and most importantly, the Eiffel Tower is a symbol of Paris and France on the whole. If you ever get the chance, (or maybe you have already), travel to Europe, see new lands, and don’t forget to go to the Eiffel Tower.