Boxing, Madness and Four Afternoon Tea: On the History of 'Big Ben'

What is it about Big Ben that makes the British love it so much? After all, it's neither the tallest nor the most beautiful tower, and if you're looking for important historic properties, the British Isles abounds with them.

There are some structures and buildings in the world, which are completely and immediately identified with the place or city where they are located. In an average city there are masses of buildings and houses, so in order to gain such recognition and enshrine in the memory of so many people, the building in question must be something truly extraordinary.

The Empire State Building, for example, is one of the most recognizable symbols of New York City. The Golden Gate Bridge is the face of San Francisco, and the Eiffel Tower is more Parisian than a store full of ghettos. Big Ben, the clock tower towering above the British Parliament on the banks of the Thames, is also such a symbol. There isn't a movie that takes place in London in which we don't get at least one shot of Big Ben, and there isn't a tourist who visited the British capital and didn't see the well-known clock (perhaps the most famous in the world). The British see Big Ben as one of their most important national symbols, just as the Taj Mahal is a symbol for Indians, the Great Wall for the Chinese and the Azrieli Towers for us. The chimes of Big Ben are broadcast to the whole world live by the English BBC twice a day. New Year's Eve celebrations begin with Big Ben marking the hour of midnight, as well as the opening of the British Air Force Remembrance Day events.

What is it about Big Ben that makes the British love it so much? After all, it is neither the tallest nor the most beautiful tower, and if you are looking for important historical properties, then the British Isles is abundant with them - the antiquities of Stonehenge, for example, are famous in their own right all over the world.

But in the eyes of the British, there is only one Big Ben, and I don't know many other nations that have given their tower an affectionate name. By the way, it is a mistake to think that the tower itself is called 'Big Ben'. The real name of the tower is simply the 'Clock Tower', and Big Ben is the name of the large bell inside the tower that rings once an hour. In any case, the deep importance that the British see in their watch can have several reasons.

First, the clock tower is part of the Palace of Westminster, the British House of Commons, and is one of the most dominant parts of this building. In better days, the British Parliament was weak over a huge empire that crossed oceans and continents, and was the beating heart of a kingdom on which it was said that the sun never sets: at any given moment, the sun, wherever it is in the world, is shining on a part of the British Empire. The House of Commons reminds the British of their glory days, and Big Ben is the symbol of the House of Commons.

Secondly, the ringing of Big Ben's bells, as I have already said, is part of British life and tradition. There is no Briton who does not recognize this ringtone, having heard it thousands of times over the radio and television. During the Second World War, it is said, when the British were faced with the tangible possibility that the Germans would invade and conquer their country, the constant ringing of Bin Ben was for them a comforting reminder of the bravery and determination of the British people.

And also from the technical point of view, Big Ben is a source of pride for them. To this day, Big Ben remains the largest four-faced clock tower in the world, and the tour guides in London especially like to tell about the marvelous accuracy of the big clock, which we will expand on later.

the great fire

The Palace of Westminster is one of the oldest buildings in London, and has existed in one form or another since the Middle Ages, around 1016 AD. For many years it served as a real palace for the English kings, and over the years it was also based as the seat of the British Parliament on its two houses.

Since the Palace of Westminster was designed as a residential palace for the king, it was not particularly suitable as a select house. Members of Parliament had to gather for their meetings in rooms that were converted for the purpose in a rather impromptu manner and were not comfortable.

This problem was solved quite sharply in 1834, and the members of parliament owe their comfortable chairs today precisely to technological developments in the exciting, exciting and life-giving field of accounting.

From the moment money was invented as a means of trade, immediately there were also those who owed money to other people. One of the biggest problems of trade in the Middle Ages was that a significant part of the population was illiterate, so keeping an accurate record of who owed whom money and how much was a serious problem.

To overcome this problem, and in accordance with the ideal of equality according to which even the most ignorant common people should be allowed to go into debt, the merchants of the Middle Ages used 'Tally Sticks'. The arithmetic sticks were, as the name suggests, long wooden sticks. The wooden sticks were engraved with markings indicating the amount of money in question: a wide socket was, for example, a thousand pounds, a thumb-thick socket was a hundred pounds, and so on. Two sets of identical markings would be engraved on the abacus, then it would be broken into two parts: a short part and a longer part. The short part was given to the borrower, and the longer stick, called 'Stock', was given to the lender who became the 'Stockholder'. This word is, of course, in common use even today and means 'stockholder'.

One of the most common uses of the calculator was in recording the residents' debts to the state. Since there were a lot of residents, there were also a lot of arithmetic sticks. But the population gradually became more educated, and in the end almost everyone knew how to read ordinary numbers, so that at the beginning of the 18th century there was no longer a need for the huge quantities of calculating sticks that had accumulated in the warehouses of the British Treasury.

But habits are hard to change, and it took almost a hundred years before Parliament finally approved the end of the use of calculators. Now the only question remains: what to do with all these sticks. The solution was quite simple: the British winter is cold, MPs want to keep warm, abacus sticks burn very well.

But in 1834, someone put a little too many sticks in the great furnace that heated one of the palace's wings, and then added sin to a crime by leaving the furnace unattended. The nobles in the House of Lords, with their typical aristocratic sensitivity, felt that the floor was a little warmer than usual, and indeed, a few hours later, nothing was left of the palace except a huge pile of coals and a few isolated buildings that were saved from the massive fire.

The sight of the House of Commons going up in flames was quite spectacular, and thousands of Londoners came to witness what must have been the most exciting event that took place in the world of accounting in the last thousand years.

The politics of style

It was also an opportunity, as mentioned, to rebuild the House of Representatives so that it would be more suitable for this role and the elected representatives would have a place to sit. The question was, in what architectural style would the building be built. It was not an aesthetic or engineering question but rather a political question.

The accepted style in the world at that time was the classical style, which has its origins in Greco-Roman architecture: the White House in Washington and other buildings in Paris in France were built in this style. It is precisely for this reason that the British politicians did not agree that the Palace of Westminster should be rebuilt in the classical style: France is the French Revolution and its radical ideas, and the White House symbolizes the kingless republic that was once a colony of Great Britain and rebelled against it. Therefore, it was decided to turn to the Gothic style, which was common in the Middle Ages and is now back in fashion among English architects. The more familiar characteristics of the Gothic style are, for example, windows in the form of pointed arches, extremely high ceilings and more or less unusual sculptures that decorate the building from the outside. Some of the sculptures also have a useful purpose and not just a decorative one, such as the Gargoyles, the winged monsters with strange faces that are actually designed gutters - this is also the origin of the name Gargoyle, the gurgling noise that water makes when it flows through a pipe.

The parliamentary committee regarding the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster initiated an open competition among British architects, and out of the ninety-five proposals submitted to the committee, the winning proposal of the architect Charles Barry was chosen.

Charles Barry was quite an accomplished architect. Already in his late twenties, he was credited with several rather impressive buildings, mainly churches and government buildings. Barry understood, however, that working on the House of Representatives was a task on a completely different scale and that this was the work that might put him among the pages of history.

Charles Barry's architectural education was quite extensive: as part of his studies, he traveled to Italy to learn about buildings from the Renaissance period, and even reached in his travels as far as the Middle East and the Land of Israel, where he was exposed to ideas that were almost unknown to his colleagues in Europe. He was also familiar with the Gothic style, which the members of the Parliamentary Planning Committee insisted upon, but knew he was not well versed in. In addition, Barry had other troubles. The construction of the palace proceeded lazily, and the government constantly pressured him to reduce the high cost of the work. And if that wasn't enough, Barry had to wrestle with one Dr. Reid who was considered (at least by himself) an expert in ventilation matters and was responsible for designing the ventilation system in the palace. For Dr. Reid, the Palace of Westminster was a ventilation system that had a building, rather than the other way around. Despite Barry's efforts, Dr. Ride's ventilation system took up about a third of the volume of the entire building - and after it was built and tested, it was found to be completely unusable.

Due to these and other troubles, Barry sought the help of Augustus Pugin, another architect who was an expert on the Gothic style, and was one of the leaders of the trend in Britain to bring the Gothic style back to the center of things. Augustus was given the task of designing all the external and internal decorations to match the Gothic appearance of the Palace of Westminster, and also designed the famous clock tower, inside which Big Ben would be placed.

The work on the Palace of Westminster was difficult and demanding for Augustus. 'I never worked so hard in my life,' wrote the exhausted architect. Moreover, without being aware of it, Augustus suffered from mercury poisoning, probably as a result of a medicine he received to treat an eye infection and which contained large amounts of this dangerous metal.

As he labored over the design of the clock tower, Augustus went and lost his sanity. He developed an obsessive fear of death, and imposed a strict regimen of prayers and self-torture to prepare himself for the next world. Shortly after finishing the design of the tower and handing the blueprints to Charles Barry, Augustus went completely insane and was hospitalized in a mental hospital. He passed away at the age of forty, not long after.

second a day

But with all due respect to the tower and its decorative gutters, it is not the main story in this episode but rather the clock itself.

Befitting a watch that overlooks the House of Representatives of one of the leading nations in the world, the demands on Big Ben were severe and difficult beyond compare. For example, the clock was asked to be accurate up to a deviation of no more than one second per day. It is important to remember that this is a mechanical mechanism weighing several hundred kilograms, which will be exposed to extreme temperatures, strong winds, dirt and dust, and which is supposed to move heavy clock hands that are almost three meters long. The clock tower also has four wigs, meaning four such huge clocks that are all driven by the same mechanism. Under these conditions, a deviation of one second per day sounded then as an absurd and impossible demand.

The one who undertook the difficult task of designing the clock was the lawyer, astronomer, architect and watchmaker Edmund Beckett. Yes, Edmund Beckett was a wise man who understood a great variety of subjects - and he didn't hesitate to show it either.

To say that Edmund Beckett was an unpopular man is probably an understatement. Everyone knew that Beckett was talented and brilliant, there was no doubt about that, but the personality...oh, the personality. Beckett believed that he knew how things should be done better than anyone, and insisted that every detail and every idea be realized exactly according to the way he outlined. He was stubborn, uncompromising and a generally unpleasant person.

The following story can be taken as a representative example of the man's character. In 1871 (about ten years after the construction of Big Ben) the need arose to restore the St. Albans Cathedral, but there was no money for the purpose. Beckett was a fairly rich man, and offered to finance the restoration from his own pocket - on one condition: he would arrange everything. He will lay down the architectural plans, and he himself will supervise the construction. The results of the restoration caused a serious uproar in England, because many architects claimed that Becket had completely deviated from the original character of the cathedral and thus damaged the historical authenticity of the restoration. Had Beckett consulted other architects before the restoration, he might have blunted the arrows of criticism. Some time later Becket was knighted and changed his name to 'Baron Grimthorpe' - but his reputation was so bad that the verb To Grimthorpe became for a time synonymous with the unsuccessful restoration of historic buildings.

Arrogant, stubborn, say what you will about Edmont Beckett - he understood in watches. In addition to being a talented mathematician who was well versed in the scientific principles of the profession, he also wrote a successful book in which he extensively reviewed all clock mechanisms that had existed up to that time. This in-depth knowledge made him realize very quickly that no known clock mechanism was good enough to meet Big Ben's requirements. For this watch, it will need something new.

Pendulum clocks, or as they are sometimes called 'grandfather clocks', are nowadays a disappearing breed of clocks. But for hundreds of years these watches were a very important part of the world of technology and science, and only in the last eighty years have we found an adequate replacement for them in the form of quartz watches and electronic mechanisms.

Until the invention of pendulum clocks, the only way (almost) to know how much time passed between two separate events was through astronomical observations. Astronomy, in fact, is one of the branches of science that the measurement of time is really an integral part of. Astronomy and time have always gone hand in hand, even in the days before written history: the sun, the moon, the planets - the celestial bodies were the only natural elements that exhibited a regular and predictable cycle even by simple means, and 'cycle' is the key word here. When will the annual flood of the Nile arrive? When Mars will be against the background of that constellation. When will this delicious flock of migratory birds return to the area again? When the moon is full for the fifth time, and so on and so forth. Today we have almost completely lost the Gordian connection with the celestial bodies, but in the past, anyone who could not recite the constellations and identify the planets was in serious trouble.

So close was this connection between our ancestors and the stars, that traces of it can be found today in countless customs, expressions and idioms. The horoscope presents to the unlucky who believe in it twelve zodiac signs which are actually the twelve easiest constellations to identify in the night sky. The names of the days in foreign languages, for example, are Sunday - the day of the sun, Monday the day of the moon, Tuesday' - in French mardi, the day of March (Mars), Wednesday, in French mercerdi - the day of Mercury, the planet of Mercury, Thursday, in French jeudi, the day of Jupiter (Zussed), Friday, in French vendredi - the day of Venus, Venus, and finally Saturday, Saturday, is the day of Saturn, Saturn.

The moon made it possible to measure time with a resolution of one month. With the help of the sun, time can be divided into days. With a good sundial and a basic understanding of the principles of astronomy it is possible to divide hours. But to measure minutes - the sun is no longer good enough. And seconds? You made me laugh.

Galileo Galilei, the famous Italian scientist whose name is probably familiar to most listeners, is the one who first realized that the solution to the problem of dividing time into small portions is found in the periodic movement of the pendulum. A short explanation for those who didn't study physics in high school: a pendulum is a weight, hanging on a string or attached to a rod, the other end of which is fixed in place (for example, stuck with a nail to the wall). The weight is free to oscillate around the fixed point, and if given an initial push it will continue to oscillate up and down, left and right, for a fairly long time.

Galileo discovered that the cycle time of the pendulum, or the period of time it takes for the pendulum to complete one back and forth movement, does not depend on the weight of the hanging weight, but only on the length of the string or rod that is attached to it. He also discovered the mathematical relationship between thread length and cycle time. why is it important? Because by playing with the length of the rod you can create time divisions as you wish. If you've ever seen a musical metronome, you've probably seen the weight at the end of it, the position of which on the bar determines the beat of the metronome.

It took Galileo some time to realize that the periodic motion of the pendulum might be an excellent basis for creating a clock. It is not surprising that he linked the pendulum and the measurement of time, since Galileo was one of the greatest astronomers of his generation - with the help of an innovative invention called a 'telescope', Galileo discovered amazing details for that time: the moons of Jupiter, for example, and the mountains and craters on the moon.

But when Galileo started thinking about a pendulum clock, he was already seventy-seven years old, old and completely blind. He came up with some ideas, and even started working with his son on a possible design for such a watch - but he passed away before he could make any real progress. It was another great scientist, Christian Huygens, who invented the first pendulum clock. Huygens's design, in 1657, is the one that was the basis for all pendulum clocks since the time of Edmund Beckett and Big Ben and even until the beginning of the twentieth century.

A soldier's watch

In order to understand how Edmund Beckett was able to design a clock mechanism that would meet the almost impossible demands of Big Ben, it is useful to preface and give a brief explanation of the principle behind pendulum clocks.

Every watch has, of course, an energy source. For the purpose of the example, the source of energy will be a heavy weight. Let's wrap the rope of the dumbbell around the axis of a simple gear, and connect the gear to the arms of the hands of a clock. As the dumbbell falls to the ground, it turns the shaft, which turns the gear and pushes the hands of the clock that move in a circle. Here, we have already created a simplistic clock mechanism.

The problem is that if we let the barbell just fall, it will hit the floor very quickly and we didn't actually measure any time. Therefore, you need to take care of something that will stop the weight and make sure that it falls in a controlled and measured manner. As you can probably guess, this 'something' is the pendulum.

The pendulum connects to the gear wheel using a mechanism called a 'toothed ratchet'. I believe that the name 'toothed ratchet' means nothing to anyone, and trying to explain how a toothed ratchet works via the radio is like a snail race - slow, tedious and of no interest to anyone. Therefore, you will have to be content with saying that every time the pendulum reaches the end of its movement, it gives a small push to the toothed ratchet, and the ratchet in turn allows the barbell to fall a little. Another push, another small fall, and so on. Each such push moves the hands of the clock forward a little, and since the pendulum moves at a constant rate, the hands of the clock also move at a constant rate. In fact, the familiar noise of pendulum clocks, the 'tick tock, tock tock' that makes a Ben Heil watch, is the noise of the pendulum pushing the toothed ratchet, and the toothed ratchet releasing the weight, or the spring in other cases.

Now, back to Edmund Beckett and Big Ben. The problem with this whole mechanism, and especially the toothed ratchet, is that it was susceptible to external disturbances. If a pigeon were to sit on one of the hands of the clock, the whole delicate mechanism of the gears would go wrong, and the pendulum would receive a push at the wrong time. The result: the pigeon didn't just screw up the clock, it also screwed up the clock. Small disturbances like these would accumulate after a short time until they would cause the clock to deviate significantly.

Beckett's solution was to invent a new toothed ratchet, which eliminates the connection between the pendulum and the other gears in the clock. This meant that now external disturbances such as a pigeon on the hands of the clock, or dust in the gears, etc., do not directly affect the pendulum, and therefore do not affect the accuracy of the clock. This invention of Beckett's, along with the fact that the entire clock mechanism was hermetically sealed to the penetration of water, dust, wind, etc., allowed him to reach the truly amazing accuracy, for those days, of one second a day.

But even a deviation of one second a day may accumulate over a period of weeks and months, and if we don't take care of it the deviation will be big enough for us to feel it. Here too, Edmund Beckett had a creative, simple and amazingly effective solution.

Galileo, as you remember, discovered that the length of the pendulum determines its cycle time. In other words, the farther the weight is from the axis of rotation of the pendulum, the slower the clock will be. The closer it is to the axis, the faster the clock will move. In a large and heavy clock like Big Ben, it is, of course, impossible to move huge weights from place to place. But if we add a small weight to the pendulum, the effect will be to move the center of gravity of the pendulum downwards: that is, as if we moved the weight away from the axis. Similarly, if we take some weight off the pendulum, we have moved its center of gravity up, closer to the axis - and the clock will move faster. There is no need for a dramatic change in weight: adding the weight of one penny is enough to slow down the clock (or speed it up, if the weight is removed) by two-fifths of a second each day. And it was also Beckett's solution to Big Ben's cumulative deviation problem: Is the clock running a little fast? No problem. Two penny coins in a special slot in the pendulum - and the clock will slow down a little. Is the clock slow? Take the coins out of the pendulum and go buy yourself something to eat in the parliament cafeteria. Beckett's clever idea even found its way into the English language, through the phrase Put a penny on it, which means - calm down, stop.

Big Ben's pendulum mechanism was complicated and difficult to design, but it was not the only problem that Edmund Beckett had to deal with.
As it soon became clear, even the big bell of Big Ben (actually, 'Big Ben' itself), the bell that will ring every round hour, is not an easy challenge at all. True to his nature, even when designing the Great Bell, Edmund Beckett had high demands. He wanted the bell to weigh fourteen tons: no one in Britain had ever cast such a large metal bell. Edmond also insisted that the bell be made from a casting of an alloy of metals that was not accepted in the world. The combination of a large bell and a non-standard casting process resulted in most British foundries simply refusing to accept the order.

Finally a foundry was found that would agree to do the work. In 1856 the great bell was ready, and was taken to London. It was placed in the courtyard of the palace that was under construction, and already in the initial tests the bell cracked in a way that completely destroyed it and made it unusable.

Beckett was unwilling to entertain the possibility that his bell design might be flawed in some way. He was convinced that the foundry did not work according to his precise and uncompromising instructions, and decided to look for another, more professional foundry. The White Chapel foundry agreed to take on the job, and recast the bell. The entire process, from the design of the bell to the final casting, took almost ten years, and when the great bell was finally ready, it was led in a magnificent procession to the clock tower in the Palace of Westminster. The crowds cheered the giant bell as it passed through the streets specially decorated for the occasion, being pulled on a large wagon by sixteen horses that were decorated with colorful ribbons. The bell was raised to the top of the tower, and all of London held its breath when, in July 1859, the mighty bell echoed for the first time over London.

Then the bell rang again, this time after two months of work.

This time it was no longer possible to take the bell off the tower and send it for repair - it was already too expensive, and the entire project had already exceeded the planned budget anyway. A disgruntled Beckett constantly complained that the White Chapel foundry also did not follow his express instructions, but he had no choice but to change his plan. He changed the hammer that taps the bell to a smaller one, to prevent future cracks, and rotated the bell a quarter turn on its axis, to present the hammer with a crack-free area. The result was that with the new hammer, Big Ben's ringing is a bit musically fake, no longer the clean and pure ringing that Beckett had hoped to achieve. Anyone who visits the clock tower even today can see the crack in the bell.

But even after the crack in the bell affair was over, the irritable Beckett didn't stop trashing the White Chapel foundry. He told anyone who would listen that White Chapel did a poor job, skimping on good materials to make a few more pennies. At the foundry they were severely offended. They took Beckett's words personally, and sued him for libel. The trial ended in victory for the foundry or in an out-of-court settlement (sources differ on this), but Beckett, in any case, did not learn a lesson. He continued to slander the foundry even after the trial, and continued to do so for many years until the foundry finally had enough of the matter and they sued him again, twenty years after the first trial - and won this time as well.

I'm not sure that Edmund Beckett stopped slandering them even after the second trial, but in White Chapel they were so offended that they don't forget his slanders to Beckett even today, already almost a hundred and fifty years later. If you go to the website of white chapel, the old foundry that still operates today, you can read their side of the Big Ben story, and see for yourself how much they dislike Edmund Beckett.

It is impossible to complete the story about Big Ben without addressing the most intriguing question of all: why is he called 'Big Ben'.

The origin of the name 'Big Ben' has two versions. According to one version, 'Big Ben' is Benjamin Hall, a minister in the British government who, as part of his duties, was also responsible for the project of rebuilding the House of Representatives. Benjamin, according to descriptions from the time, was a particularly tall man, hence his affectionate nickname 'Big Ben'. At one of the parliament meetings, according to the story, the question of the name of the new clock tower came up. Speakers took the stage one by one, coming up with different names, and the discussion went on and on. When Benjamin Hall's turn came, he himself gave a long speech on the matter, and when he finally dammed his river of words, one of the exhausted back benchers shouted - 'Why don't we call him Big Ben, and be done with it?' Whether it was a successful name, or whether the members of parliament were ready for any name as long as they were allowed to go to the bathroom - the proposal was accepted by a majority of votes.

There are doubts about the authenticity of this version. The sessions of the British Parliament were meticulously documented, and none of the session minutes from that time have evidence of this story - so there is a good chance that there is another case of a politician trying to take credit for something he is not responsible for. Here is also the place to note that the clock tower was also used, until the end of the nineteenth century, as a prison for unruly members of parliament. Those who caused trouble during the debate were not taken by the ushers to the Knesset cafeteria as is the case with us, but were imprisoned in a special room in the clock tower. I don't usually bring up topics from current politics in this podcast, but in my opinion our House of Representatives can only benefit from such a clock tower. Maybe even two.

The second version of the origin of the name 'Big Ben', and probably the most reliable of the two, is that the tower was named after the boxer Ngmin Count, who was the greatest boxer in Britain and perhaps in the whole world in those days. Count was an exceptionally tough guy, and this fact is even more apparent when you realize that boxing in those days was bare-knuckle boxing. It sounds like a painful sport, and probably rightly so, but for the sake of fairness it should be noted that the British followed the rules of gentlemen, and it was forbidden to hit the opponent when he was on the floor, or in particularly painful areas like...the crown diamonds, let's call them that.

The boxing matches had no time limit, and a fight would continue until one of the contestants collapsed. Count, a big guy, wasn't technically a lifter, but his extraordinary stamina allowed him to fight thirty and forty round fights. This legendary endurance of his earned him many admirers in London, and there is a fairly reasonable chance that the tall tower was named after him.

Big Ben is one of the most successful clocks ever built. His credibility is something taken straight out of fairy tales. During the first hundred years of its operation, Big Ben maintained strict accuracy and regular operation despite dramatic events such as the bombing of the Palace of Westminster by the German Air Force in World War II. The bombs destroyed part of the House of Representatives, and shrapnel hit two of the four bells of the clock tower - but Big Ben continued to tick without interruption.

The first significant malfunction that happened to Big Ben was in 1962, a year in which the winter was particularly difficult. The heavy snow that fell on the tower caused Big Ben to ring its traditional New Year's bell ten minutes late. The next malfunction, in 1977, was more serious: one of the metal parts of the clock mechanism broke due to material fatigue, and Big Ben was shut down for nine whole months.

In recent years, Big Ben has undergone renovations and maintenance work from time to time, to allow its mechanism to continue ticking deep into the twenty-first century. The British are downright obsessed with the state of health of their national symbol, and regular reports on the clock's maintenance work appear on Parliament's website. In 1980, the BBC reported that to prevent future mechanical breakdowns in Big Ben's clock mechanism, the large and cumbersome clock hands would be replaced with a modern digital display. This report caused a great uproar in Britain, and the British Broadcasting Authority received dozens of letters from listeners who were outraged at the damage to the nation's holy of holies - until someone noticed the date: April XNUMXst.

מקור

This article is taken from the program script 'Making history!', A bi-weekly podcast about the history of science and technology.