US-4230848

An official from USA with the famous Liberty Bell. 

Photo: David Traub

US-4230848, sent by Sarah.

In 1751, the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly—part of the state’s colonial government—paid around 100 pounds for a large bell to hang in its new State House (later known as Independence Hall). Cast at London’s Whitechapel Bell Foundry, the bell arrived in Philadelphia in August 1752.

On July 8, 1776, the bell was rung to celebrate the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. After the British invasion of Philadelphia, the bell was hidden in a church until it could be safely returned to the State House. A popular icon of the new nation and its independence, it wasn’t called the “Liberty Bell” until the 1830s, when an abolitionist group adopted it as a symbol of their own cause.

After being moved to a pavilion near Independence Hall in 1976 (the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence), in 2003 the Liberty Bell was relocated to Liberty Bell Center in Independence National Historic Park, where millions of visitors view its famous crack each year. - in: http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/why-is-the-liberty-bell-cracked