27th June: The Liberty Bell

On this date in 1778 the Liberty Bell was returned to Philadelphia. 10 facts about a bell with a crack in it and why America loves it so much.

1. Although the Liberty Bell is an iconic symbol of American independence, at the time of the Declaration of Independence, it was simply known as the Statehouse Bell, and was used to summon lawmakers to legislative sessions and to alert citizens about public meetings and proclamations.
2. The original bell was cast in Whitechapel, London, in 1752, long before the revolution. Isaac Norris, the then speaker of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly, asked the colony's London agent, Robert Charles, to obtain a "good Bell of about two thousands pound weight". The growing city needed a bell which could be heard over a greater distance. Charles ordered the bell from the London bellfounding firm of Lester and Pack (now the Whitechapel Bell Foundry). It cost £150 13s 8d, (equivalent to £21,351.87 today).
3. Nobody really knows how it first got a crack in it. It's possible that it cracked the first time it was rung in its new home. Some place the blame on the Whitechapel Foundry for making a flawed and brittle bell. The Whitechapel Foundry says it must have been damaged in transit or rung by an inexperienced bellringer. Whatever the reason, it was decided that the bell had to be broken up and re-cast. This was done by two local founders, John Pass and John Stow. They reckoned the bell was too brittle and added more Copper to the mix to rectify it. However, although it didn't break when it was rung again, it sounded, according to one contemporary report, "like two coal scuttles being banged together". Pass and Stow hastily took the bell away and recast it a second time. This time they added pewter with a high lead content, so even though it sounded all right, it was brittle, It cracked again when rung for Washington’s Birthday in February 1846. The authorities in Philadelphia actually tried to have the bell sent back to London and a new one made, but the captain of the ship which had brought it refused to take it. A new bell was ordered anyway, but they didn't think it sounded any better than the old one, so they left the old one where it was and put the new one in the cupola on the State House roof and attached to the clock to strike the hours. President Benjamin Harrison, said of it, "This old bell was made in England, but it had to be re-cast in America before it was attuned to proclaim the right of self-government and the equal rights of men."
4. The inscription on the bell reads "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. "By Order of the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania (the spelling of "Pennsylvania" was not at that time universally adopted) for the State House in Philada." Centred on the front of the Bell are the words, "Pass and Stow / Philada / MDCCLIII."
5. It wasn't called the Liberty Bell until abolitionists adopted the Bell as a symbol of their movement. The name referred to the Bible verse inscribed on it. The verse following it in the Bible reads "It shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family." The Abolitionists took this to mean that all slaves had to be freed every fifty years.
6. The story that the bell was rung on July 4, 1776 probably isn't true, and was merely fabricated by a journalist. The public announcement of the Declaration when bells were rung all over the land was several days later on July 8. It may have rung then, but according to the Independence Hall Association, the state house steeple was under repair at the time, so it may not have been rung then, either. Nobody who was there is around to verify the story.
7. Whether it rang or not, it was feared the British would melt the Bell and use it to make cannons, so it was removed and hidden away, returning on June 27 1778. In 1915 it went on a tour of the USA and attracted huge crowds, but the brittleness of the bell made it too easy for souvenir hunters to chip bits of it off, so it was placed in the Liberty Bell Center in Philadelphia, where it is occasionally tapped to mark special occasions.
8. The Liberty Bell weighs 2,080 pounds (940 kg) and comprises 70% copper and 25% Tin, with the remainder consisting of Lead, Zinc, arsenic, Gold and Silver. Its Circumference is 12 ft (3.7m).
9. The capsules of the Mercury spacecraft launched in the 1960s were bell-shaped. The Mercury spacecraft that astronaut Gus Grissom flew on July 21, 1961, was dubbed Liberty Bell 7 and was painted with a crack to mimic the one in the bell. It was the only Mercury craft to get the modification, and it was the only one to suffer an integrity failure.
10. Any conclusion that the bell must therefore be cursed is contradicted by a Taco Bell April Fool joke in which the company claimed they'd bought the Liberty Bell and changed its name to the Taco Liberty Bell. Some people were angry about that, but even so, Taco Bell’s sales went up by more than a half million dollars that week.