SPEAKER_02: Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do Hall of Famers like, oh I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_03: Liberty Bell cracked in half.
SPEAKER_02: So that's been on a loop in my head. A bacon steak, a perfect match.
SPEAKER_03: You know it's been on a loop in my head? Either the final countdown or that one you were whistling the other day that drove me nuts.
SPEAKER_03: Sure. Yep. Suzanne Vega. Boy, you can earworm it with the best of them.
SPEAKER_03: You know, I was thinking about Ween the other day. I was like, I need to find something new to like get into. And I was like, you know, Ween's got a pretty extensive collection. And they're weird and cool. And I never really got into them. Not because I don't like them. I just never got into them. So I'm like, maybe I'll go see if I can get into Ween a little bit.
SPEAKER_02: Well, I can send you the book on how to do that. The order of operation. Oh, okay. Please do.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. Please do.
SPEAKER_02: I'll need to send you a canister of nitrous too, though. That's fine. I'm not sure if you can do that through the mail.
SPEAKER_03: Please do. So we're talking Liberty Bell.
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
SPEAKER_03: And the reason why we're talking Liberty Bell is because, well, there's no good reason. But let's talk about the Liberty Bell anyway, because it's actually pretty interesting. The Liberty Bell we think of today as the Liberty Bell is a fraud.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Let's go back in time a little bit to 1751. Let's hop in the old Wayback Machine. Oh, boy. This is as dusty as can be. Don't get too close to that spider. Yeah, this is very dusty, but it still fires up. Look at that. The flux capacitor is fluxing. Yes. And off we go to 1751 to the State House of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania State House, where they have just brought in the bell. And even though it's not named the Liberty Bell at this point, that would come along as we see much later. It's a bell, and it was used, although it had a lot of causes and purposes through the years. Sure. At first, it was just a bell. Like, we ring it when someone important dies or when we need to call the government together. Like, the reasons you ring a town bell.
SPEAKER_03: Someone won a bingo. Yeah, ring that bell. They called it initially the State House Bell, which is on the nose but appropriate because it was originally commissioned by the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly to be the bell in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. They didn't even call that Independence Hall. It was the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. Everything was very businesslike, bureaucratically named, and it told you what it did and what it was, and that's how they liked it.
SPEAKER_02: That's right. The bell itself was cast by Lester and Pack, a company out of London, with the words, proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof, which is apparently a reference to Leviticus in the old Bible. Duh. And it was about three feet high, a circumference of 12 feet, weighed about 2,100 pounds. And like I said, it was just a bell. And here's the thing about the Liberty Bell and that crack is no one really agrees on exactly how that happened.
SPEAKER_03: No, but some historians think that it cracked the first time it was used in 1752 after it was installed, like the first time.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and Lester and Pack were like, I don't know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_03: Right. Actually, it's pretty cool. They made good on the replacement. So the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly said, Pack, Lester, fellas, we need a replacement bell and we're not going to pay for it, okay? And they said, that's fine. We'll send you another bell. And the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly was like, well, do you want the cracked one back? Do you want us to send a picture of it or something? They're like, you just keep it, do whatever you want with it. Make belt buckles out of it, munitions, hat buckles if you're still into the pilgrim thing, shoe buckles, shoe buckles, all the, any kind of buckle you want to make, you go ahead and use that bell. And they said, you know what? We're going to actually use this bell to make a replacement bell while we wait for the real replacement bell. And this is where it gets confusing unnecessarily. And I say we take a break, just let all that sink in. All right, let's do it.
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SPEAKER_04: I'm Lauren Brad Pacheco, host of Symptomatic, a medical mystery podcast, a production of Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. Every other week, we get to know the everyday people living with a mysterious illness and hear their firsthand stories of struggle and perseverance on their quest for answers. During the day, I'd feel like I'm just getting sick. I'd sort of have that flu-ish feeling, and then the next morning I'd be fine.
SPEAKER_01: Then he started getting nodules on his body. He had been to so many different doctors, and I just felt like they were just throwing a dart at what this could be and trying different medications.
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't imagine that anyone could be alive and have a mutation in that gene.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to Symptomatic, a medical mystery podcast, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_02: All right. So if I am understanding this correctly, you now have two bells?
SPEAKER_03: Technically three, eventually, but one doesn't exist any longer, but it does because it's now been melted into the second bell.
SPEAKER_02: Okay. But you also have the replacement bell, right? Yeah, right. And they were both apparently in the Pennsylvania State House. They were both used. But who knows what happened to the replacement bell that Pack and Lester sent?
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay. So that's the one that wasn't officially hung or hanged. I'm not sure what you would say there.
SPEAKER_03: I would say hung, but then you would correct me. Okay. So it was the one that they melted down and redid the original. That is the official one then?
SPEAKER_02: That's what we call the Liberty Bell, yes.
SPEAKER_03: Okay. All right. But they didn't call it the Liberty Bell back then. Again, they called it the State House bell. And then they were like, which one? They were like, the original one. They were like, I thought that one was melted down. And they were like, yes, this is the one that we melted down from the original. It went on a lot every time somebody asked about it. So they're belling this thing up. They're using it as you would use a bell. In 1777, when the British were encroaching, they removed the bell because they didn't want it captured and melted down into bullets, basically.
SPEAKER_02: Or buckles. Or buckles. They hid it again later on in a church. Oh, I'm sorry, they hid it in the church then in Allentown. And then in 1785, they raised it again. And it was really just a bell until 1824 when Marquis de Lafayette was the last general of the revolution that survived, went on a tour of the United States. And America, that's when America was like, hey, let's rename this place Independence Hall and let's call this thing – well, actually, it took another 11 years to call it the Liberty Bell even. Yeah, it was some abolitionists who were like, oh, you got a Liberty Bell, huh? You know who the Liberty Bell doesn't ring for? Enslaved people. So let's do away with slavery.
SPEAKER_03: And they actually used the Liberty Bell and the new national pride around it to really kind of point out just how slavery is a terrible thing. And we need to do away with it. Yeah. So here's where it gets really interesting. That first bell was damaged and cracked. So they melt it down, make this new one.
SPEAKER_02: The new bell cracks as well. And they're not exactly sure how this happened either, but they think it was in 1835 when it was rung to mark the death of John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, to mark his passing. And other people say, you know, no, it was really the 1840s during the Fourth of July when things got really rowdy. Or other people said, no, it was on February 23rd when we were getting hammered celebrating George Washington's birthday. Like, people are just ringing the heck out of this thing. And no one's really sure. The National Park Service, for their point of view, just says, you know, it just cracked after 90 years of use. Like, quit asking. Just be quiet. Just take the pamphlet and be quiet.
SPEAKER_03: Exactly. But apparently there are some researchers who in 1975 were like, actually, it wasn't just like hard use. This bell was destined to crack. And the reason why is because they're high tin content. It's like a quarter tin almost. That you don't want to use that in a bell that peels. Maybe a decorative bell, something you find at like Kirkland's or something that it's not meant to ring. Sure. Make that a tin. But you're using like a functional workhorse bell. Do not put 25% tin in that thing. No. You've been telling me that for years.
SPEAKER_02: Sure. The bell they tried to fix in 1846 because Washington's birthday was rolling around again. And they were like, listen, you know what we do here in Philly. We get drunk. We ring this bell. We act incredibly inhospitable for our professional sports teams and the teams that play them. Don't get us started on Santa Claus.
SPEAKER_03: And they used something called stop drilling, which in which they actually widen the crack.
SPEAKER_02: The crack now is 21 inches long and about an inch, a couple of centimeters wide. And they would widen it. So basically when it was rung, the two sides would not touch each other at all and create this awful buzz. The boy-yo-yoing?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly. So they widened it so it wouldn't touch. But another crack developed and they were like, we've got to find a better way to celebrate Washington's birthday. We can't ring this thing anymore.
SPEAKER_02: They said, forget it. Forget it.
SPEAKER_03: I'm done with this stupid bell. That's what they said. Yeah. So it became a true symbol after that point. They just stopped ringing it. And apparently over the years, people have been like, we've got to fix that thing. We've got to ring that thing again. It's a big deal. And other people are like, don't even bother. It's like better as a symbol. And in fact, it proved its worth pretty quickly on as a symbol during World War I. And I guess it went on a whistle stop tour of the United States on the back of a train and drummed up enthusiasm and support for Liberty Bonds. Like they were called Liberty Bonds because the Liberty Bell was basically the mascot of this bond drive to raise money for the U.S. to fight World War I. And they ended up raising in today's dollars billions of dollars from Liberty Bonds thanks to that cute little bell with the crack in it.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Pretty good. Earned its worth. Yeah. They think a quarter of the United States saw the Liberty Bell during that tour. That's how popular it was. People just thronged to see it.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. That's right.
SPEAKER_02: Pretty neat.
SPEAKER_02: Pretty neat. And if anyone is emailing me right now, oh yeah, well the Phillies own the Braves the past two years. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. Get out of sports radio. It's toxic.
SPEAKER_03: You got anything else? I got nothing else.
SPEAKER_02: Okay. Well since Chuck said that, short stuff's out.
