LONDON, May 28: Big Ben, the world-famous clock tower at the Houses of Parliament in London, stopped on Friday night, and nobody is quite sure why. The 147-year-old timepiece — one of the most reliable in the world — stopped at 10.07pm, then started again, then stalled a second time at 10.20pm where it remained for 90 minutes before it was reset.

Hot weather might have been to blame — Friday was the hottest May in London since 1953, with a high of 31.8 degrees — but no one was certain.

“We’ve been told there was a minor glitch, but then it was started up again,” said an engineer at the Palace of Westminster, the official name given to the Houses of Parliament.

Big Ben is renowned for its accuracy, surviving a dozen attacks by German bombers during World War Two when it continued to mark the time within one-and-a-half seconds of Greenwich mean time.

It has been late on occasion. In 1962, snow accumulation caused the clock to ring in the new year 10 minutes late, and in 1976 it stopped when a piece of its machinery broke down.

It also ground to a halt on April 30, 1997, just 24 hours before the general election that put Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Labour Party in power, and once more three weeks later.—AFP