The Man Who 'Sold' the Eiffel Tower

Paris, spring 1925. This is the story of how Victor Lustig, a con artist who called himself Count Lustig, sold the Eiffel Tower, and why the first sale worked. Much of the tale comes from Lustig's own later boasts and from a book written about him years afterwards, so some of the details are the story as he told it. He sat reading a newspaper. The article was about the tower and said it cost a great deal to keep up. It noted that some citizens felt the structure should be removed to save the city money. The tower had been built for the 1889 World's Fair and was meant to be pulled down in 1909. Now it stood in disrepair above the city, and many Parisians thought the 7,300 tonnes of iron an eyesore. Lustig saw something nobody else did. If the city could not afford its tower, a government might quietly sell it for scrap. And if no such plan existed, he could invent one.