A man spent 8 years building the Eiffel Tower out of matches, but did not get into the Guinness Book of Records because of an offensive little thing

A Frenchman who spent eight years building a 7-metre model of the Eiffel Tower using matches was denied a world record because he used the wrong type of matches, reports Yahoo.

Photo: IStock

Richard Plaud began creating a replica of the iconic Paris landmark in 2015 and hoped that upon completion it would secure a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the tallest matchstick sculpture.

But the organization ruled that most of the 706 matches he used were not eligible for official accounting because they were not commercially available and had been significantly altered from their original form.

“It’s disappointing, it’s not clear, it’s not fair,” Plaud said. “It’s a dream that slipped away.”

“Tell me why 706 sticks stuck one after another are not matches. My matchstick tower is still standing, and its height will be 900 meters for a long time,” he wrote on social media.

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He said Guinness World Records, which calls itself "the world's authority on all things records," made the decision without seeing his model in person.

Plaud, who works in the works of art and bridges department of the Charente-Maritime Council in western France, completed his project on December 27, the 100th anniversary of the death of Gustave Eiffel, the engineer of the original tower.

The 47-year-old bought matches from supermarkets and then cut off the heads by hand.

“It was a very meticulous job,” he noted in an interview in January.

Fatal mistake

In an effort to make the process easier, Plaud convinced French match manufacturer Flam'Up to supply him with boxes of headless matches in bulk.

This decision regarding the construction method appears to have influenced the verdict of the Guinness Book of World Records committee. According to Plaud, he was informed that the match heads had to be cut off by hand for his attempt to be valid.

The current record belongs to the Lebanese master Toufik Daher, who created a model of the Eiffel Tower 6,53 meters high. According to the Book of Records website, Daher used approximately six million matches and unveiled his creation in Beirut on November 11, 2009, at the Guinness World Records Day celebrations.”

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Plaud's construction technique included 402 panels that would fit together to form a matchstick tower. Construction work took place at his home in Montpellier-de-Médillane, a village in western France.

As Plaud was finishing up the model last year, his wife Sandra told a French television channel that she was looking forward to "taking back my living room."

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