It was a match made in Heaven.
Patrick Acton loved working with his hands—and matchsticks were cheap to come by. These two were paired together thanks to long winters in Iowa during the 1970s; and what began as a hobby crafting old country barns and churches out of matchsticks launched Acton to worldwide fame. His matchstick milieu was thrown into the spotlight, garnering him his dream job with Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and even his own museum—Matchstick Marvels.
Now 70, Acton still works in the same old basement workshop he started in 40 years ago, but instead of building tiny replica barns, he’s making an entire fantasy world filled with wonders: a life-size flying locomotive made of a million matchsticks, a scaled-down Millennium Falcon, a two-headed dragon with matchsticks scales, castles galore, and the U.S. Capitol building. All these were crafted down to the last detail out of tiny, insignificant sticks of wood….