The Liberty Bell's Crack Was Made Worse by an Attempted Repair

The Liberty Bell cracked worse because someone tried to fix it. An 1846 account in the Public Ledger described the bell ringing on February 23 that year and noted it had developed a crack, which someone had attempted to repair by filing the sides down. The fix was documented; the crack was not fixed by it. According to that same account, the February 23 ringing extended the crack even further. Which makes the famous fissure less an accident of age than the record of a botched repair: file the sides down, ring the bell, and the damage keeps going.