History of New Year's Eve
The New Year has been celebrated in many different ways around the word for many, many years now. In America, we have our own traditions that started in 1904 with the first-ever celebration of New Year's Eve in Times Square. The inaugural event commemorated the official opening of the new headquarters of The New York Times. The newspaper owner, Alfred Ochs, had successfully lobbied the city to rename Longacre Square in honor of the famous publication. The impressive Times Tower was at the time, Manhattan's second-tallest building and was the focus of an unprecedented New Year's Eve celebration.
An all day street festival culminated in a fireworks display set off from the base of the tower, and at midnight the joyful sound of cheering, rattles and noisemakers from the over 200,000 attendees could be heard from as far away as thirty miles north along the Hudson River. The night was such a success that Times Square instantly replaced Lower Manhattan's Trinity Church as "the" place to ring in the New Year. Before long, this party would capture the imagination of the nation, and the world!
History of the New Year's Eve Ball
The actual notion of a ball dropping to signal the passage of time actually dates back long before the celebrations in Times Square. The first "time-ball" was installed atop England's Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833. This ball would drop at one o'clock every afternoon, allowing the captains of nearby ships to precisely set their chronometers. After the success of Greenwhich, around 150 public time-balls are believed to have been installed around the world. The tradition is carried on today in places like the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., where a time-ball descends from a flagpole each day at noon and once a year in Times Square, where it marks the stroke of midnight for over one billion people watching worldwide.
This aluminum ball remained in use until 1981, when red light bulbs and the addition of a green stem converted the ball into an apple for the "I Love New York" marketing campaign. After 7 years, the traditional glowing white ball returned and in 1995, it was upgraded with aluminum skin, rhinestones, strobes and computer controls. In 2007, the 100th anniversary of the Times Square Ball Drop tradition, the incandescent and halogen bulbs of the past century were replaced by state-of-the-art LED lighting technology that dramatically increased the brightness and color capabilities of the Ball. The beauty and energy efficiency of this new ball inspired the building owners of One Times Square to build the permanent Big Ball, which weighs nearly six tons and measures 12 feet in diameter. The ball is now a year-round attraction sparkling above Times Square.
For more information about New Year's Eve in Times Square, including this year's celebration, please visit: http://www.timessquarenyc.org/events/new-years-eve/index.aspx#.VKHEL14ANA.
Happy New Year from Mission Bay! Mission Bay offers Lake living at its finest with gorgeous lake view and lakefront homes at the Lake of the Ozarks. The development boasts an exquisite clubhouse with heated indoor pool and outdoor pool and hot tub for entertaining family and friends. Nearby is the new Woods Supermarket, lake front restaurants and just 6 minutes from Camdenton via the improved Highway 5.
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