London’s Big Ben Shows Its 4th Face
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Associated Press
LONDON — The last of the four clock faces on London’s famed Big Ben tower was revealed Wednesday, after 21 months of obscurity behind scaffolding.
The 320-foot tower and the adjoining houses of Parliament are undergoing a $11.4 million facelift, the first in 50 years. Cleaning and restoration of the blackened neo-Gothic complex began in July, 1981, and is to be finished in 1990.
Big Ben is the 13 1/2-ton bell, cast in 1858, that chimes the hours from behind the clock faces.
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