On this day in history: Eiffel Tower inaugurated, 1889

In 1884, the French structural engineer and architect, Gustave Eiffel, started to draw up plans for a 300-metre tall iron tower. He submitted his design as an entrance arch to those responsible for the Exposición Universal de 1888, a World's Fair to be held in the Spanish city of Barcelona. The city governors, the Consistory of Barcelona, rejected the idea because they considered it not only to be too expensive, but also ill-fitting with the surrounding architecture.

Undaunted, Eiffel submitted his design to the planners of the Exposition Universelle, another World's Fair to be held in Paris in 1889 to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution. His plans met with approval and work commenced in January 1887. Over the next two years hundreds of workers cleared the site by the River Seine, constructed the foundations, and fabricated and assembled over 18,000 different parts of the three platformed Tower using over 2,500,000 rivets.

On 31st March 1889, Eiffel and members of the Council of Paris climbed the 1,710 to the top of the construction, where he planted a French flag to inaugurate the 312 metre tall Tower that now bears his name. At that time it was the tallest tower in the world, a distinction that it held until the completion of New York's Chrysler Building in 1930, despite Eiffel only holding a permit for the Tower to stand for twenty years. Indeed, the original contest rules required that the structure be easily dismantled. Nevertheless, the addition of an antenna proved the Tower's value for radio and then later for television broadcasts.

Initially the object of disgust of the many Parisians who considered it to be an eyesore the Tower soon became a major tourist attraction, having over two-million visitors in its first year alone. The Eiffel tower has become arguably the most recognisable landmark in the city and a symbol of French pride. To learn more you can download a pdf file telling you All you need to know about the Eiffel Tower from the official website.

On this day in history: Elisha Otis installed his first passenger elevator, 1857

Man has used hoisted platforms to move materials since ancient times, but the ever present danger of the rope or cable snapping prevented the widespread use of such devices to transport people. This was the case until the nineteenth century when the serial inventor Elisha Graves Otis and his sons, Charles and Norton, developed an automatic safety system. Born in August 1811 in Halifax, Vermont, Elisha Otis left home at nineteen years of age. He spent five years working as a wagon driver before moving to the Vermont Hills with his wife and young son. There he designed and built a gristmill, which he later converted into a sawmill. A lack of customers resulted in him turning his hand to vehicle manufacture.

Following the death of his wife, he remarried and set off with his two sons to start a new life in Albany, New York. He worked at a bedstead factory where he developed and patented a machine for turning the bedstead rails. He received a $500 bonus from his employers that he invested in his own engineering business. When the city of Albany redirected the stream from which he drew power, he moved to Bergen City, New Jersey, and worked as a mechanic. He then relocated to Yonkers, New York, where he took over management of an old sawmill that he intended to convert to a bedstead factory.

Otis realised that he needed to lift the debris out of the building, but he was concerned about the reliability of hoisted platforms. Along with his sons, he designed and tested a 'safety elevator'. They passed a rope through a sprung mechanism, which would be released if the rope broke pushing into toothed guide rails on either side of the lift, holding it in place. They founded the Union Elevator and General Machine Works Company to market their invention.

Otis made first public display of his elevator at the 1853 Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York. He stood on the elevator which was drawn upwards whereupon he took an axe and severed the rope from which the elevator hung. The crowd gasped as the platform fell a few inches before being held in position by his device.

Otis received a succession of orders for his elevators over the following years, but only to transport goods. He finally received the contract to install a passenger elevator in the five-story E. V. Haughwout Building that was under construction at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway. The elevator cost $300, making its first journey on 23rd March 1857.

Elisha Otis continued to invent new devices until April 1861 when he died of diphtheria. The company he founded went from strength-to-strength under his sons' management. Their company installed Otis elevators in some of the most famous structures in the world including the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building.

On this day in history: The funeral of Pocahontas, 1617

In 1596 an Algonquian princess with the formal names of Matoaka and Amonute was born in an area known as Tenakomakah (modern day Virginia). She was the daughter of Wahunsunacawh who was the Chief or Powhatan of a confederation of tribes in that area, later known as the Powhatan Empire, and one of his many wives. Due to her carefree antics she received the nickname Pocahontas meaning 'playful one' and became her father's favourite daughter despite her lowly status within the family.

In May 1607 English colonists began to settle in the area. In December that same year, a group of Powhatan hunters captured a leading colonist called John Smith. According to his later account, they took him to one of their main settlements called Werowocomoco, where he was laid across the stone about to be beaten to death. The young Pocahontas threw herself across him and persuaded her father to spare his life. It is entirely possible that this was a symbolic act of adoption or a small part in a ritualised peace treaty. Either way, a bond developed between the young girl and the Englishman. She frequently visited the Jamestown colony, where she lived up to her nickname, turning naked cartwheels and larking about with the local boys. Smith later told of the time she risked her life to provide the colonists with food and by warning them of an impending attack planned by her father.

In 1609 Smith's return to England for medical care following an explosion and the resumption of the armed conflict between the English and the Native Americans resulted in an end to the contact between Pocahontas and the colonists. Not long later she may have married a Powhatan captain called Kocoum. Little is known of this union but it appears to have ended before 1613. By that time she was living in Passapatanzy, a village of the Patawomecks who traded with the Powhatans. According to Smith, she had been in the care of the Patawomeck chief, Japazaws, for a couple of years. He accepted a bribe from a group of colonists led by Captain Samuel Argall to trick Pocahontas onto their ship where they took her captive. The colonists intention was to trade her for a peace treaty and the English prisoners, weapons and tools held by her tribe.

Even though the Powhatans returned the prisoners and some of the equipment they had captured, the colonists were not satisfied and a year-long negotiation began. In that time Pocahontas remained captive in the town of Henricus where she fell under the influence of Reverend Alexander Whitaker, who persuaded her to embrace Christianity. While there she also succumbed to the romantic advances of John Rolfe, a pious tobacco planter who had recently lost his wife. After being baptised under the new name of Rebecca she married Rolfe on 5th April 1614. In January the following year, the couple had their only child, Thomas Rolfe. While the marriage did not secure the return of all the colonists' possessions, it did cement amicable relations between them and the Powhatans.

The promotion of the possibility of amicable relations between the Native Americans and Europeans was of great importance to the Virginia Company of London, which administered the colonies in that region. Upon hearing about the marriage of a native Princess to an English gentleman they ordered the colonial governor, Sir Thomas Dale, to bring Pocahontas to England. In June 1616, Rolfe, his wife and around a dozen of her countrymen including a holy man called Tomocomo, arrived at Plymouth. From there they travelled to London where she attended various society events as well as being received by Queen Anne. The Powhatans found the foul air of London disagreeable and within months they moved to the nearby village of Brentford, where Pocahontas had an emotional reunion with John Smith, who she thought to be dead.

The climate of the English winter did not agree with Pocahontas and in March 1617 the Rolfe's boarded ship to return to Virginia. Weakened by sickness, probably pneumonia or tuberculosis, she was in no fit state to make the arduous crossing of the Atlantic. She went ashore at Gravesend in Kent where she died. Her funeral took place on 21st March 1617 at St. Georges Church, a tragic end to the short life of a key figure in American history.