Amazingly, the bells still chimed and the clock still showed the exact time after the Houses of Parliament were bombed during World War II. The building was completely destroyed, but the tower and the clock weren’t damaged. The clock faces are 7 metres in diameter. The hour hand is 2.7 metres long, and the minute hand is 4.3 metres long. There is an inscription in Latin in gold letters along the bottom of each of the clock faces, ‘O Lord, keep safe our Queen Victoria the First’. The clock’s time is kept accurate. There have been some incidents when the clock was inaccurate. In 1949, birds damaged the minute hand and made it slow down by 4.5 minutes.

During World War II Big Ben was partly damaged.

• True
• False
• Not Stated