Blackpool Tower is a tourist attraction in Blackpool, Lancashire in England which was opened to the public on 14 May 1894. (grid reference SD 306 360). Inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it rises to 518 feet 9 inches (158.12 metres). The tower is a member of the World Federation of Great Towers. The tower is a Grade 1 listed building.

The idea for the tower came when Blackpool Mayor John Bickerstaffe commissioned the design of a new landmark for the town after he visited the Exposition Universelle (World Fair) of 1889 and was impressed by the Eiffel Tower. When he returned to Blackpool he set up a committee of businessmen in order to raise the funds to build a similar design in the town.

He invested £2,000 of his own money to form, with other local investors, the Blackpool Tower Company Limited, registered on 19 February 1891.

Two Lancashire architects, James Maxwell and Charles Tuke, designed the Tower and oversaw the laying of its foundation stone, on 29 September 1891 with a time capsule buried beneath it. By the time the Tower finally opened on 14 May 1894, both men had died. The total cost for the design and construction of the tower and buildings was about £290,000. Five million bricks, 2,500 tonnes of iron and 93 tonnes of cast steel were used to construct the tower. The cast steel and iron are distributed in such a way that if it did ever collapse it would fall into the sea. A system of hydraulic riveting was used based on the technology of Fielding & Platt.

Blackpool ⁱ/ˈblækpuːl/ is a borough, seaside town, and unitary authority area of Lancashire, in North West England. It is situated along England's west coast by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, 17.5 miles (28.2 km) northwest of Preston, 27 miles (43 km) north of Liverpool, 30 miles (48 km) northwest of Bolton and 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Manchester. It has an estimated population of 140,000, making it the third most populous settlement in North West England after Manchester and Liverpool, and a population density that makes it the fourth most densely populated borough of England and Wales outside Greater London.

Throughout the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, Blackpool was a coastal hamlet in Lancashire's Hundred of Amounderness, and remained such until the mid-18th century when it became fashionable in England to travel to the coast during the summer to bathe in sea water to improve well-being. In 1781, visitors attracted to Blackpool's 7-mile (11 km) sandy beach were able to use a newly built private road, built by Thomas Clifton and Sir Henry Hoghton. Stagecoaches began running to Blackpool from Manchester in the same year, and from Halifax in 1782. In the early 19th century, Henry Banks and his son-in-law John Cocker erected new buildings in Blackpool such that its population grew from less than 500 in 1801 to over 2,500 in 1851. St John's Church in Blackpool was consecrated in 1821.

William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody (February 26, 1846 – January 10, 1917) was an American soldier, bison hunter and showman. He was born in the Iowa Territory (now the U.S. state of Iowa), in Le Claire but lived several years in Canada before his family moved to the Kansas Territory. Buffalo Bill received the Medal of Honor in 1872 for service to the US Army as a scout. One of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill became famous for the shows he organized with cowboy themes, which he toured in Great Britain and Europe as well as the United States.

William Frederick Cody ("Buffalo Bill") got his nickname after the American Civil War when he had a contract to supply Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo meat. Cody earned the nickname by killing 4,280 American bison (commonly known as buffalo) in eighteen months, (1867–1868).Bill Comstock also had the nickname. Cody and Comstock competed in a buffalo-shooting match over the exclusive right to use the name, which Cody won by killing 69 bison to Comstock's 48.