The Ferris wheel was America's answer to the Eiffel Tower.

1889 · 1893 · apart: 4 years

George Ferris's 80-metre wheel was the star of the 1893 Chicago fair, four years after the one in Paris.

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The event

• Eiffel Tower1889 · Paris. Gustave Eiffel's 300-metre tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair, marking the centenary of the Revolution. It was due to be dismantled after 20 years but was saved by its use as a radio antenna.

19th century

More amazing facts

• 1888 · 1896 · 1901 Alfred Nobel read his own obituary eight years before he died.
• 1889 The Eiffel Tower opened in spring 1889, and in June van Gogh painted The Starry Night at the Saint-Rémy asylum.
• 1889 Nintendo is as old as the Eiffel Tower: it was founded in Kyoto on 23 September 1889 to make hanafuda playing cards, the same year the tower opened.
• 1889 · 1890 Reporter Nellie Bly went round the world in 72 days, beating Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg.
• 1889 · 1900 The matryoshka is younger than the Eiffel Tower.
• 1889 For 130 years the kilogram was not a formula but an object.

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