An Illinois teenager broke a Guinness World Record by building a 17.32-foot-tall replica of the Eiffel Tower from about 20,000 toothpicks.
Naperville resident Eric Klabel said his father’s career as a civil engineer inspired him to get interested in building from a young age.
“When I was younger, I just got really, really interested in building things out of popsicle sticks,” Klabel told WGN-TV.
He ended up building a 20.2-foot tower from popsicle sticks in 2021, when he was only 12 years old, and set his first Guinness World Record.
That record has since been broken, but Klabel captured his second Guinness World Record in October when he took on a project using a new medium: toothpicks.
“The annoying thing about toothpicks– compared to popsicle sticks, they’re just so incredibly tiny,” Klabel said.
He managed to use nothing but toothpicks and glue to build a model of the Eiffel Tower that stands at 17.32 feet tall, capturing the record for the world’s tallest toothpick sculpture.
