New Year Celebrations in New Yorkp,

Each year, millions of eyes from all over the world are focused on the sparkling Waterford Crystal Times Square New Year's Eve Ball. At 11:59 p.m., the Ball begins its descent as millions of voices unite to count down the final seconds of the year, and celebrate the beginning of a new year full of hopes, challenges, changes and dreams.
Times Square Ball

For over a hundred years, the New Year's Eve Ball in Times Square has made an epic drop which regard as the official start of a fresh calendar.
Every year, about a million people tackle freezing temperatures to watch it live. Another hundred million sit glued to their TVs as parties rage around them.
All for a Ball? Well, not just any Ball. This one's got some history...

The first New Year's Eve Ball dropped from a flagpole in 1907 to rally attention to the new New York Times building. Made from iron and wood, the Ball was decorated with a hundred light bulbs.

Six years after the first Ball drop, The New York Times moved to a new building. One Times Square is now totally empty except for a Walgreen's, offices for a New Year's planning company, and the Ball on its roof.

The Times Square Ball has changed size and style seven times. From 1981 to 1988, it had a stem like an apple... as in "the Big Apple."

The Ball couldn't drop on New Year's Eve in 1942 and 1943, due to wartime dim-outs. Reverent crowds still came to Times Square for moments of silence.

The crystal triangles on the current Ball actually change every year- previous year, their theme was "Gift of Imagination." The 2014 triangles had been cut so they "appear to be endless mirrored reflections of each other.”

Organizers throw an actual ton of confetti -- by hand -- onto Times Square after the Ball's descent. A few days before, they throw test confetti off various buildings to make sure it won't scratch somebody's eye. During showtime, handwritten wishes from tourists are mixed
into the confetti
shower.

The current Ball is a whopping (or not so whopping, depending on what you expect) 12 feet wide(3,6 м). It weighs over 11,000 pounds.

You can see the Ball all year round-- it's visibly perched on the roof of One Times Square.

The Ball's journey down the pole takes a full 60 seconds.

Today, New Year's Eve in Times Square is a bona fide international phenomenon. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people still gather around the Tower, now known as One Times Square, and wait for hours in the cold of a New York winter for the famous Ball-lowering ceremony. Thanks to satellite technology, a worldwide audience estimated at over one billion people watches the ceremony each year. The lowering of the Ball has become the world's symbolic welcome to the New Year.