26Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower was supposed to be scrapped after 20 years. It only survived because the military started using it as a radio tower, intercepting crucial military transmissions during World War 1.
27. The tallest free-standing tower in the world, the Tokyo Sky Tree, had its final height chosen solely because of wordplay; several numbers were considered because of their alternate meanings, they ended up choosing 634 meters for "Musashi."
28. The Roman Pantheon built in 118 A.D., is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.
29. St Paul's Cathedral in London can be seen from King Henry's Mound, 16 km (10 miles) away. No building obstructing this view is allowed to be built by law.
30. The Aurora Ice Hotel in Alaska was made entirely of ice. Ice walls, ceiling, beds, bar, barstools, even martini glasses were made of ice. It was closed by the fire marshall for not having smoke detectors.
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31Pentagon
The Pentagon building covers 6.5 million square feet (2 times the Empire State Building) and is occupied by 23,000 people, making it the biggest office building in the world. Also, it was designed so that no point in the building is more than a 10-minute walk from another point. Construction took just 16 months.
32. The Empire State Building generates more revenue from the observation deck than all the commercial tenants in the remaining 101 floors combined.
33. The Iroquois Theater in Chicago was billed as "Absolutely Fireproof" in advertisements when it opened. It lasted 37 days before being destroyed in what is still the deadliest single-building fire in U.S. history, leaving 602 dead and 250 injured.
34. The "Loony Gas Building" was the name given to an old Standard Oil plant in 1924 after every single man who worked there was hospitalized for insanity in which 5 people died. The plant was manufacturing a new, breakthrough product named leaded gasoline additive.
35. Before the Washington Monument was completed, the tallest structure in the United States was the 234 foot tall Phoenix Shot Tower, where molten lead was dropped from a platform at the top of the tower through a sieve into a vat of cold water at the bottom, forming perfect spheres of shot.
