This article is classified "Real"
Sometime around the turn of the century, the enterprising city of Paris decided to host the Great World Expo. It is a little known fact that the plans for this Expo included the building of a life-size reproduction of the famous Colossus of Rhodes. This was a brave plan, and would make the world forget about those damned English and their accursed Crystal Palace [1]. However, the Architect In Charge sadly under-estimated the time required for such an erection [2], and had just completed the supporting scaffolding by the time the Expo opened. A cunning Parisian businessman, by the name of Monsieur Eiffel, saved the day, by sticking a top on it, and pretending that the scaffolding was what they had intended to build in the first place. Unfortunately, the parents of the said M. Eiffel had not been strict enough with him as a child, and consequently, he had never learned to clean up after himself. The result of this is that instead of demolishing the scaffolding at the end of the Expo, as per the original plan, it just sort of got left there. The Eiffel tower still [3] stands today, unchanged except for the addition of a few dozen restaurants, a few thousand tons of pigeon shit, and a few million tourists. It blends in with its environment about as well as a nun in a nudist camp [4], and its only redeeming features are that you can see it from quite a long way off, and that people make a lot of money selling crap Eiffel Tower paper weights. Still, it's better than what Brussels has. Notes-des-pieds [1] Which just "happened" to burn down around this time [2] Apologies to Mrs Slocum and Finbar Saunders [3] Incredibly [4] Sorry Sisters