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Which came first, Coca-Cola or the Eiffel Tower?

Which came first, Coca-Cola or the Eiffel Tower?
Coca-Cola
1886 — 3 years before the Eiffel Tower

Coca-Cola came first, by 3 years. John Pemberton first sold his syrup at a pharmacy in Atlanta.

Side by side

Coca-Cola the Eiffel Tower
Year 1886 1889
Date 1886-05-08 1889-03-31
Category company landmark
What happened John Pemberton first sold his syrup at a pharmacy in Atlanta. The tower opened for the Paris Exposition Universelle.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola went on sale in May 1886 as a patent medicine, selling about nine glasses a day in its first year. Pemberton sold the rights for a few thousand dollars and died in 1888 without seeing any of it. Pepsi followed in 1893 under the name Brad's Drink, renamed Pepsi-Cola in 1898 — so Coke is seven years older, and both are older than the Ford Motor Company.

the Eiffel Tower

Built for the 1889 World's Fair and intended to be dismantled after twenty years, the Eiffel Tower survived because it turned out to be useful as a radio antenna. It was the tallest structure in the world until the Chrysler Building in 1930. It opened in the same year Nintendo was founded, and two and a half years after the Statue of Liberty it is often assumed to predate.

Common questions

Which came first, Coca-Cola or the Eiffel Tower?
Coca-Cola, by 3 years — 1886 against 1889.
When did Coca-Cola start?
1886. John Pemberton first sold his syrup at a pharmacy in Atlanta.
When did the Eiffel Tower start?
1889. The tower opened for the Paris Exposition Universelle.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked