The Eiffel Tower has a new Guinness World Record!
The Eiffel Tower might have broken a number of records over the years, but it’s yet again breaking a new record!
This time, as the tallest matchstick sculpture.
Standing at 7.2 meters tall with 700,000 matchsticks, this Eiffel Tower sculpture has won the Guinness World Record as the tallest matchstick sculpture in the world.
It took Richard Plaud, a French national from Saujon, Charente-Maritime in Southwest France over 8 years to realize this achievement.
Photo credit: Guinness World Records
Using more than 706,000 matches and 23 kilograms of glue, Plaud meticulously crafted a 23-foot replica of the iconic Paris landmark, dedicating over 4,200 hours to this labor of love.
Initially, Plaud faced a significant hurdle. Guinness World Records had initially disqualified his sculpture due to the use of matchsticks that were not commercially available in their altered form.
Plaud had started with commercial matches but found the process of removing the ignitable heads very time-consuming.
In an attempt to make his work faster, he arranged to purchase matchsticks without heads directly from the manufacturer, a decision that initially led to the disqualification of his record attempt by Guinness.
Plaud shared his disqualification disappointment in various interviews and on Facebook saying “Tell me that the 706,900 sticks glued together one by one are not matches!!??”
However, the story took a positive turn when Guinness World Records revisited their decision.
Acknowledging that their initial ruling may have been “too harsh,” they reversed their decision on 7th January, recognizing Plaud’s sculpture as the tallest matchstick model of the Eiffel Tower.
Mark McKinley, a director at Guinness World Records expressed excitement in approving the record and noted that the organization may have been “a little heavy-handed” with their initial decision.
The sculpture’s completion date, December 27, coincided with the centenary of the death of Gustave Eiffel (the man who designed the real Eiffel Tower), adding a layer of historical homage to Plaud’s work.
Richard Plaud’s matchstick Eiffel Tower not only set a new Guinness World Record but also triumphed over a previous record held by Lebanese craftsman Toufic Daher, who had built a 21-foot model of the tower.
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