Big Ben Is the Bell, Not the Tower
13.7 tonnes settles the matter. Big Ben is the Great Bell, suspended inside Elizabeth Tower, not the masonry that carries it; public speech attached the famous name to the hour-strike because sound travels farther than architecture and because campanology treats a bell as an object with its own identity. Its name may honor Benjamin Hall or the boxer Benjamin Caunt. Certainty never arrived. That am...More
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