The Tale of the World’s Littlest Skyscraper
How a scam artist fooled investors with a simple trick.
Skyscrapers are long buildings that touch the skies. These monstrous products of beautiful engineering touch the clouds and shine with the rising sun. When you think about these buildings, they are very comparable to mountains.
However, there is one skyscraper in Wichita, Texas, that stands 40 feet (12 meters) tall. It is the Newby-McMahon building. It is popularly known as “the world’s littlest skyscraper.” This “skyscraper,” smaller than a lot of houses, was meant to be very tall.
Instead, a simple mistake changed its fate completely. In 1918, a petroleum reserve was discovered in Texas. This caused a massive oil boom. Wichita Falls had become a place for investors to pour money into the construction of buildings. They were confident that their investment would make them a fortune.
The boom didn’t last all that long. All the speculations about this place later proved to be wrong. Now, in all of this, some people managed to scam some investors with this building — a four-story long skyscraper.
Inches or Feet?
The blueprints of this building said that this would be 480" long, which is 480 inches. But it was meant to be 480' long, which is 480…
