Daredevil James Kingston Evades Security And Climbs The Eiffel Tower

  • by: Maarten Schenk

Just watching this video by James Kingston gives us sweaty palms. Here is his own description:

The Eiffel Tower has been one of my goals for quite a while. Plan A for the Tower was to buy tickets to the second platform & climb out of one of the stairways. This immediately failed as it was just too busy. We didn't really have a plan B so we decided to commit to climbing right up the side from the ground & see what happens. We started the climb at 1AM narrowly avoiding the patrolling security (which seemed more like the French army as they were in full camo & had massive guns) & wormed our way through what seemed like endless CCTV cameras. Once we reached about 20 meters up the side of the tower it appeared we'd made it through what would normally be the riskiest part of any climb. As far as I could tell, the tower was ours for the night. After slowly making our way up through the framework of the Tower, we finally reached the top platform which was fully lit up. This is where we should have probably stopped but my curiosity got the better of me. I unlocked the door, slowly crept in and was immediately hit with the sound of a walkie talkie going absolutely mental in French. It was clear we'd been spotted so we legged it down a few stories & found a couple of holes inside the framework that we had no choice but to hide in. Hours went by with security going up & down with torches & they even turned on all of the towers lights during their search. The lights finally went off and the tower was ours again so we began the wait for sunrise. After a few more hours playing around on the tower workers & tourists started coming up in the lifts. We were spotted again around 9AM so we climbed down & met with security. We were handcuffed & taken to the local police station where we were held & questioned for around 6 hours before being released without charges (I also had to promise them I wouldn't climb it again for 3 years). I can now officially tick the Eiffel Tower off my list :)

The video first appeared online on November 8th but only started picking up a large number of views about a day later, as this graph from Lead Stories' Trendolizer shows:

Lead Stories' Trendolizer™ constantly scours social networks worldwide for hair-raising stunts online. Scroll down to see the latest.


  Maarten Schenk

Maarten Schenk is the co-founder and COO/CTO of Lead Stories and an expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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