March 31, 1889: The Eiffel Tower Opens

March 31, 1889: The Eiffel Tower opens, on the Left Bank on the River Seine, in the 7th Arrondissement of Paris. It was the centerpiece of the Exposition Universelle, a world's fair celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the French Revolution.

Parisian high society hated it. I guess they didn't get the memo: The fair was celebrating the overthrow of the high society of the previous century. Everybody else liked it. Visitors during the Exposition included the great French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII of Britain, who was having an affair with Bernhardt), inventor Thomas Edison, and Buffalo Bill Cody, whose Wild West Show was an attraction at the fair.

Gustave Eiffel was 56 years old at the time it opened, and was previously best known for designing railroad bridges, which explains the black iron structure of his tower. It was meant to be torn down after the fair, but it was kept up. This proved to be invaluable in World War I, since its height made it a good point from which to transmit radio signals from the capital to the front, something of which Eiffel heartily approved. He died in 1923.

From 1925 to 1934, it was the world's tallest advertisement, carrying a sign advertising Citroën cars on its sides. When the Nazis took over in 1940, Adolf Hitler wanted it dismantled and taken to Berlin. When the Allies advanced on Paris in 1944, Hitler wanted the city burned and the Tower blown up. Neither happened.

Its original height was 984 feet, making it the tallest freestanding structure in the world, until surpassed by the Chrysler Building in 1930. In 1957, a broadcast antenna was added, making it 1,052 feet tall. The antenna has periodically been replaced, and a new one in 2022, for digital radio, made it 1,083 feet. Like the Empire State Building in New York, it gets lit up in special colors for special occasions (including France winning the World Cup in 1998 and 2018), and it gets fireworks shot out of it every New Year's Eve.

At Midnight on New Year's Eve

It remains, easily, the tallest building in France, and still serves as a stand-in for the city, the entire country, sometimes even for Europe as a whole. Of course, it has still has its critics: A common joke is that it has the best view in Paris, because, from there, you can't see the Eiffel Tower.

Many copies or replicas, at least in intent, have been built, including the Blackpool Tower in England, the Tokyo Tower in Japan, at the France Pavilion at Epcot at Walt Disney World in Florida, and at the Paris Las Vegas Casino Hotel.

It's been shown in many films, including Funny Face in 1957, The Great Race in 1965, Superman II in 1981, A View to a Kill with Roger Moore as James Bond in 1985, National Treasure: Book of Secrets in 2007, and the recent animated films Ratatouille in 2007 and Hugo in 2011. It's also one of those landmarks that tends to get destroyed in disaster movies, including Armageddon in 1998 and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra in 2009.

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March 31, 1889 was a Sunday. Baseball was in the preseason, football was out of season, basketball didn't exist yet, and hockey barely did. So there were no scores on this historic day.