Inauguration of the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated in Paris. When French engineer Alexander Gustave Eiffel proposed building a wrought-iron lattice tower for the 1889 Paris Exposition, few took him seriously. But Eiffel was a stubborn man, and on March 31, 1889, the opening day of the exposition, he personally raised the French flag atop the tower. At the time, the Eiffel Tower, 984 feet tall, was the tallest building in the world. A masterpiece of 19th-century architecture, it has undergone few modifications and still retains all its charm.
