Mike Hewitt/Getty ImagesLondon is the only city to host the Olympics three times.

LONDON -- For anyone throughout the UK who plans on sleeping past 8:15 on Friday morning, a set of industrial-strength earplugs is highly recommended.

That's because at precisely 8:12 on July 27, the day the curtain officially drops on the 2012 London Games, hundreds of thousands of Brits from all across the world will be encouraged to ring every bell they can find for three straight minutes.

Church bells. School bells. Door bells. Dinner bells. Cow bells. Butler bells. Bicycle bells. Car horns. They will all ring in celebration of the start of the Olympics, which will culminate with the opening ceremonies precisely 12 hours later.

Even Big Ben is scheduled to partake in the headache-inducing, three-minute affair, which the London Organizing Committee says will be the first time the giant clock will ring off schedule since the funeral of King George VI in 1952.

"All the Bells" is the idea of Turner Prize-winning artist and musician Martin Creed and is actually an official "work" of the London Olympic Festival. Work No. 1179 calls for "all the bells in a country to ring as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes." Creed says "it could be a brilliant and amazing sound." Or it could scare the daylights out of people trying to sleep off a late night.

Bells have long been used to mark momentous occasions in Britain's history, be it the end of World War II or as an alert of an impending attack. The Romans frequently rang bells in celebration of special events. But never has there been such a concerted effort to simultaneously ring bells across the globe.

The London 2012 Festival calls the bell-ringing ball the "biggest community celebration for the Games." There is even an app Brits can download that will allow them to shake their cell phones and create a bell sound. The goal is to set the record for the most people ringing bells at one time, but quantifying such a feat may prove impossible.

Beyond celebrations in London, which include 300 children ringing the bells on the HMS Belfast in the River Thames, ships from the Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary will ring bells around the world. So, too, will British Embassies. There are plans to ring rickshaw bells at the Embassy in Bangladesh and cow bells in Botswana. Even a British research team from Antarctica has said it will participate.

Perhaps the most jarring chimes will happen in Chicago, where it will be 2:12 a.m. local time and the bells from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Rockefeller Chapel and University of Chicago will ring for all 180 seconds, even without any direct connections to the U.K.

"The commission shows the Festival's commitment to world-class artists and to the values of participation," Ruth Mackenzie, the director of the Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival, said in a statement. "Martin Creed's wonderful idea gets everyone involved in the opening day of the Games, not just as an audience but as an integral part of the work."

Earplugs not included.