Is going to Times Square on New Year’s Eve on your bucket list? I’ve been there and it’s definitely an interesting experience! I was one of the lucky few that was at a private event (which had a bathroom and was downstairs from Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve). Even thought we were inside it was freezing cold (even the alcohol didn’t help), and twenty minutes before the magical hour we were herded like a group of cattle into the “VIP” area where we were squished like sardines. The ball drop, however, was amazing.
So you may be wondering where the tradition of the Times Square ball drop started. The history actually centers around the The New York Times moving to its new headquarters in 1903. The paper’s owner wanted to mark the festivities with a midnight fireworks show, which continued for four years. In 1907, to draw more attention to the newly renamed Times Square, he had a lighted Ball constructed to be lowered from the flagpole, this was the debut of the Ball drop at one second after midnight. Though the NY Times later moved its headquarters, the Times Square celebration lives on.
The Ball has transformed from being made of iron and being five feet in diameter, to today’s Ball which is the seventh version, weighing in at 11,875 pounds, measuring 12 ft. in diameter with 2,688 Waterford crystal triangles which vary in size. The Ball is illuminated by 32,256 LED’s in 672 modules which each contain 48 LED’s – 12 red, 12 blue, 12 green & 12 white – for a total of 8,064 of each color. The Ball is capable of displaying more than 16 million colors and billions of patterns that creates the spectacular kaleidoscope effect. WOW!!!
So as you sip your champagne and countdown to midnight you can astonish your friends with your new found knowledge.
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