Man who constructed Eiffel Tower model with over 700,000 matchsticks gets world record

The Guinness Book of World Records awarded the man who built a nearly 24-foot Eiffel Tower out of hundreds of thousands of matchsticks with a world record weeks after he was disqualified.

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Guinness on Friday decided to reverse its decision, according to NBC News. The company said that they made a mistake, according to The New York Times.

Richard Plaud earned the title of tallest matchstick sculpture and received a statement from Guinness clarifying its decision, the Times reported.

“The impressive sculpture depicts the Eiffel Tower and was built over several years using more than 700,000 matchsticks,” Guinness said.

“We’re really excited to be able to approve it (...) we’re happy to be able to admit that we were a little bit too harsh on the type of matches needed in this attempt, and Richard’s attempt truly is officially amazing,” said Mark Mckinley, director of central records services at Guinness World Records, according to Reuters.

Earlier in the week, Guinness told NBC News that it was looking into its decision to disqualify Plaud. The reason was that the matchsticks he used were not “commercially available,” according to Reuters.

Plaud told Reuters that he had been on an “emotional rollercoaster” over the past week.

Plaud had used more than 700,000 matches to create the tallest structure in the world, Sky News reported. It took him about eight years and more than 4,000 hours to do so. it also took about 23 kilos (50 pounds) of glue to stick all the matches together, Reuters reported.

Plaud finished his masterpiece a couple of days after Christmas and went ahead with submitting it to the Guinness World Records. His years of hard work were rejected.

The previous record was an Eiffel Tower by Toufic Daher that was made up of 6 million matches, NBC News reported. His sculpture was about 21.4 feet high. The record was previously set in 2009.

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