Big Ben Silenced for Big Makeover

This morning, a SWAT team descended its south face to start cleaning more than 300 individual panes of glass, and the clock's giant hands. The minute hand alone is 14 feet long.

Big Ben not only chimes on the hour. It chimes every quarter hour, too. A decade ago, a British musicologist had the nerve to say that the quarter-hour chimes were flat, and that, altogether, Big Ben was out of tune.

Big Ben survived that slur, just as it survived the German bombing blitz on London in World War II. It also survived countless attacks in Hollywood movies, including one from Mars, when it was blown to smithereens.

There's every reason to think it will make it through this latest rite of passage. And that it will soon be ringing out the hours again in that familiar, haunting sound that's known as "the heartbeat of the nation."