Victor Lustig And His Eiffel Tower

Victor Lusting was a famous counterfeiter and scam artist of Czech origin, very well mannered and educated, and fluent in various languages; these abilities allowed him to scam and rip off people from all around the world, and the French indeed, got their due with the Eiffel tower, an iconic monument of Paris that made Monsieur Eiffel a millionaire and a celebrity for his engineering feat. The Eiffel tower was commercially successful right from its beginnings but despite that today is quite a landmark, at the time it generated quite an opposition among engineering, political and architectural circles and in fact, there were plans for scrapping it that even reached the higher echelons of the French government.
The tower had indeed many detractors during its early years of life and many of those expressed concerns about the structural integrity of the then peculiar monument, stating that it had to be demolished before 1930 or it would become a very dangerous big thing in the middle of a populous city. It was finally saved for reasons completely different from the aesthetic or engineering criteria considered back then: As telecommunications evolved the French authorities finally saw its value as an antenna tower, and its structural soundness was proven. The tower itself has been refurbished and updated several times in order to keep it safe and solid, and today it undergoes constant maintenance, much like the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco.

But such ambivalence left the door opened for any entrepreneur con man. So Victor Lustig went to France to do a little work, and presenting himself as a French government official, he started a secret bid among various companies to select the one that would eventually be in charge of disassembling the huge structure and sell the metal as scrap, a deal that sounded very, very good. In exchange for selecting a "winner," the French official asked for a very reasonable bribe, which he got a few hours before he left the country.

Then he let some time pass until he made sure that the "winner" would do or say nothing, and he returned; on arrival, he sold the Eiffel tower once again, to yet another eager and happy "winner."

Article Source: http://www.articlegush.com

More tips on online gambling and gaming, plus comments, stories and other related stuff available at Apostar.in.

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated