A man wanting to break the Guinness World Record for the tallest Eiffel Tower sculpture made of matchsticks suddenly saw his dream go up in flames after he was told that the material he used disqualified him for the record.
Richard Plaud’s impressive creation amounted to 706,900 matchsticks, 4,200 hours of his life, and a goal to celebrate the most emblematic structure of his country’s capital.
A resident of Charente-Maritime, a French department located in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, the talented artist believed he had easily beaten the existing record held by Lebanese model maker Toufic Daher, who used six million matches to create an Eiffel Tower replica measuring at 6.53m (21.4ft).
