Richard Plaud labored 4,200 hours over eight years to painstakingly transform more than 700,000 matchsticks into a 23½-foot-tall model of the Eiffel Tower, driven by a goal he had held since he was a ...

It’s 10 a.m. in Gladbrook, Iowa, and down in the workshop in his basement, Pat Acton is doing what he does almost every morning: picking up matchsticks and gluing them together, one at a time. And ...