French Man’s Eiffel Tower Matchstick Creation Earns Guinness World Record After Reversal

Richard Plaud, a Frenchman with a big dream of making the tallest matchstick sculpture in the world, made headlines recently. His huge model of the Eiffel Tower got rejected by Guinness World Records, saying he didn’t follow the rules.

Plaud felt really disappointed. He told TF1 French TV news how much it hurt that his hard work didn’t make the cut.

But then, there was a surprise! After looking into it again, Guinness World Records said they were too strict with their rules. They admitted they made a mistake. Plaud’s model of the Eiffel Tower, which is 1:45 scale and over 23.5 feet tall, got the green light. He spent years and used over 700,000 matchsticks to create this masterpiece, finally showing it off to a big crowd last month.

Initially, Guinness had said the matchsticks Plaud used were different because they didn’t have the usual flammable tip. Plaud got his matchsticks straight from a French company to save time and avoid waste. But according to Guinness’ old rules, this didn’t match up with how others had made record-breaking structures. For example, the previous record holder from Lebanon used around 6 million matches for a smaller tower.

Plaud, who lives in France, felt crushed when Guinness rejected his attempt to set a record. He talked to the media about how disappointed he was.

But then, things turned around. Guinness reversed their decision and officially recognized Plaud’s achievement. They even updated their rules to allow matchsticks to be shaped differently.

Plaud, who’s 47, has been sharing his journey of building the matchstick Eiffel Tower on social media. Now, he’s celebrating his Guinness World Records title, and Guinness is saying sorry for any trouble they caused him. They’re congratulating him on his amazing creation!