For Whom The Bell Tolls: Big Ben Turns 150

LONDON — Happy Birthday, Big Ben. One of Britain's last bell foundries yesterday marked the 150th anniversary of its biggest creation — the massive bell whose bongs sound the hour at the Houses of Parliament.

It was made by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which also made Philadelphia's Liberty Bell and the Bell of Hope, given to New York by Londoners on the first anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The 15-ton Big Ben was cast on April 10, 1858, at the foundry in east London, although it was another year before it first rang out from Parliament's 19th-century neo-Gothic clock tower, designed by Charles Barry.