The Eiffel Tower was going to be torn down

Today we can't picture Paris without the Eiffel Tower. But when it went up, plenty of people loathed it and its fate was the scrapyard.

It was built for the 1889 World's Fair as a feat of temporary engineering. The permit ran for twenty years: in 1909, ownership would pass to the City of Paris, which planned to dismantle it and sell off the iron. Artists and intellectuals of the day signed manifestos demanding its demolition on the grounds that it was ugly.

What saved it wasn't beauty, but usefulness. Its height made it a perfect antenna for the newborn field of wireless telegraphy. The French army began using it to transmit messages and pick up communications, and suddenly tearing down that hulk was unthinkable. The Eiffel Tower survived because it was good for listening to the air.