28 May 28, 2005 Hector Duarte Jr All Headline News Staff Reporter
London, England (AHN) - Big Ben stopped ticking at 10:07 p.m. Friday and resumed shortly after, only to stop once again at 10:20 p.m. and remain idle for the next 90 minutes. Officials are still unclear why the clock stopped ticking, but speculate the halt could be weather related. A recent heat wave has swept England, causing temperatures in London to reach 90 degrees Saturday. An engineer with The Palace of Westminster, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the AP, he had been informed it was a minor glitch, which was corrected soon after. This is not the first time Big Ben experiences problems. In 1962, snow caused the clock to ring in the New Year ten minutes late. In 1976, a piece of its machinery broke and the clock stopped working; it also halted on April 30, 1997 and again three weeks later. Big Ben is housed in St. Stephen's Tower on the bank of The Thames River. Completed in 1858, the tower stands 315 feet tall and survived German Luftwaffe bombing campaigns during the second World War, continuously marking time to within one-and-a-half seconds of Greenwich Mean Time. http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/2234632120 ---[Start Commercial]--------------------- World Radio TV Handbook 2005 is coming out. Preorder yours and support open communications for DXers: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0823077942/hardcoredxcom ---[End Commercial]----------------------- ________________________________________ Hard-Core-DX mailing list [email protected] http://dallas.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx http://www.hard-core-dx.com/ _______________________________________________ THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt
