Romanatic (for Romantic)

On March 31, 1889 the Eiffel tower was inaugurated at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. At 300m, the tower is twice as tall as the Great Pyramid at Giza (146.5 m). It was built to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution, in particular the storming of the Bastille.

A competition was held that prompted more than 100 submissions of plans for the monument! Bridge engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was the winning designer, though at the time the judges were skeptical about the aesthetic quality of the iron latticework. I find it hard to believe now, with so many people around the world enamored of the structure and the romantic Parisian life it seems to symbolize.

Romanatic is our typo today, a low probability error that appears 10 times in Worldcat. For more about the Exposition that launched the Eiffel Tower (and another typo!), see our past entry for souvenier*.

(Photo of the tower from Wikimedia Commons.)

Leanne Olson