Tower

What is amazing about the Eiffel Tower is that it exists at all. I mean one dude decided: hey, I'm gonna build this god damn thing, and somehow he got France to give him a shit-load of money. There was no commercial reason otherwise. Gustave must have pissed off a lot of people in his way.

Did you know that the lift cables were cut in 1940 so that Hitler would have to climb the steps to the summit? The parts to repair them were allegedly impossible to obtain because of the war. In 1940 German soldiers had to climb to the top to hoist the swastika, but the flag was so large it blew away just a few hours later, and it was replaced by a smaller one. When visiting Paris, Hitler chose to stay on the ground. It was said that Hitler conquered France, but did not conquer the Eiffel Tower. A Frenchman scaled the tower during the German occupation to hang the French flag. In August 1944, when the Allies were nearing Paris, Hitler ordered General Dietrich von Choltitz, the military governor of Paris, to demolish the tower along with the rest of the city. Von Choltitz disobeyed the order. The lifts of the Tower were working normally within hours of the Liberation.