Paris, France, is one of fourteen destinations featured on Waddles' World Tour, RestMap's free daily 5-letter word puzzle. Each week's puzzles are themed around a different city, and every solve unlocks an authored travel fact about the place. The Eiffel Tower anchors the Paris week. Below are five sourced facts that turn up across the Paris puzzle set.
The Eiffel Tower grows up to 15 cm taller in summer due to thermal expansion of its 7,300 tons of iron, and on sunny days the top tilts slightly away from the sun, tracing a circular arc of about 15 cm in diameter as the sun moves across the sky.
Source: Tour Eiffel official site, Snopes, Interesting EngineeringParis has zero stop signs. The city removed its last stop sign in 2016, relying entirely on traffic lights and right-of-way rules to manage traffic in a metropolis of 2.1 million people.
Source: Buzzfeed Paris Facts, Solo SophieIn 2004, Paris police discovered a fully equipped secret cinema in a 4,300-square-foot cave beneath the 16th arrondissement, complete with a screen, projection equipment, seating, a bar, and a pressure cooker for making couscous. When they returned three days later with experts, everything had been removed and a note read: 'Do not try to find us.'
Source: National Geographic, NPR Paris UndergroundIn medieval Paris, chamber pot contents were hurled from windows onto the streets below with shouts of 'Regardez l'eau!' ('Watch out for the water!'). Some etymologists believe this is the origin of the British slang word 'loo' for toilet.
Source: Paris Sewers Museum, Toilet GuruIn 1855, Baron Haussmann appointed Eugene Belgrand to completely rebuild Paris's sewer system. By 1878, Belgrand had excavated over 600 km of sewer tunnels — up from just 25 km in 1800 — effectively building a mirror city underground that matched the streets above.
Source: Paris Sewers Museum, Crystal Bennes