The best place in the world to celebrate New Year's Eve

In the list of the best places to celebrate the New Year in the world, Times Square (New York, USA) is always number 1. The ceremony of lighting the crystal ball in the square at the New Year's Eve has interesting little-known details.

According to the travel and discovery website National Geographic, Times Square in New York City, USA is ranked first in the top 10 best places to welcome the New Year in the world. The excitement of more than a million people in the square is always considered the most beautiful prism, capturing the excitement of billions of people around the planet.

Every year, the New Year's Eve event in Times Square is always broadcast live by American TV channels, attracting hundreds of millions of viewers around the world, many of whom wish to be present at that exciting place. That is also the reason why, among the more than one million people present in Times Square, there are many foreign tourists.

About a million people jostled each other in the square, brightly lit with neon signs. Times Square is considered the “navel” of New York, a vibrant center that represents the spirit of the “Big Apple” city.

On New Year's Eve, a million people gathered to watch the crystal ball descend from the roof of the building that was formerly the headquarters of the New York Times. In fact, the name "Times Square" was born here.

The ball lighting ceremony has been around for over 100 years. So what exactly makes the ball’s appearance in Times Square so special? Let’s find out…

The first New Year's Eve celebration held in Times Square took place in 1904, with the aim of raising the stature of the new headquarters of the New York Times, when the long-standing newspaper found a "prime" location to "settle down".

Wanting to attract more attention to his move to new headquarters, the editor of the New York Times at the time, Mr. Adolph Ochs, thought that New Year's Eve was the ideal time to hold a "housewarming" party for the newspaper.

So 200,000 people were invited to One Times Square, where the newspaper's headquarters were located, to party all day on the streets, ending with fireworks as the new year rang in. The ball of light had yet to appear.

The Times Square ball first appeared in 1907. At that time, the editor of the New York Times - Mr. Adolph Ochs - wanted to add more brilliance and spectacularity to the newspaper's annual event, so he asked the newspaper's electrical engineer and design expert to cooperate.

Inspired by ancient time balls often used on ancient ships, they designed a ball weighing more than 300kg, 1.5m in diameter, made of iron and wood, and fitted with 100 25-watt light bulbs.

On New Year's Eve, the ball is hung from the top of the flagpole on the roof of the building. When the ball reaches the roof, a neon sign lights up to signal the arrival of the new year, and fireworks are set off. This tradition continued until 1920.

There are a total of six balls that appear in Times Square every New Year's Eve:

In 1920, the “simple” ball with 100 electric bulbs was abandoned. A new ball of light was designed to reduce the mass, it was made entirely of iron and kept the same size.

In 1955, the ball was designed to be thinner, using 68kg of aluminum, and controlled “automatically”, requiring only the use of a button. In 1996, the ball was “updated” with a computer-controlled lighting system, equipped with 180 halogen bulbs, 144 flashing lights, and 12,000 quartz crystals.

To welcome the year 2000, the world-famous crystal company Waterford Crystal was invited to cooperate to design a fourth, larger ball, with a diameter of 1.8m, weighing 485kg, and equipped with more than 600 halogen bulbs, 504 triangular crystal pieces, 96 flashing lights...

The 2008 ball marked the 100th anniversary of the first crystal ball lighting ceremony in Times Square. This fifth edition is 1.8m in diameter, weighs 550kg, and is lit by 9,567 energy-saving LED lights with computer-controlled colored patterns appearing on the ball.

The ball we see today is the 6th version made in 2009, the largest ever seen with a diameter of 3.6m, weighing 5,386kg, attached with 32,256 LED lights, and 2,688 crystal pieces, forming a sphere twice as large as the 5th version ball.

There were two years when the ball of light was not lit in the square, in 1942 and 1943, when political unrest affected New York’s New Year’s Eve celebrations. However, crowds gathered in the square as usual and shared a moment of silence, followed by the ringing of bells.

One Times Square is no longer home to the New York Times, and the tenants who have come since have not brought anything particularly new and impressive to the building like what the newspaper's editor-in-chief once did to One Times Square.

Currently, the largest source of revenue for this building comes from renting out billboards, with an estimated annual revenue of up to 23 million USD (523 billion VND), accounting for 85% of total revenue.

The lowest temperature the globe ever descended was in 1917 when temperatures reached -17 degrees Celsius. New York's average nighttime temperature is 1 degree Celsius. The best temperatures were in 1965 and 1972, when temperatures reached 14 degrees Celsius.

A ton of confetti will be released into the crowd at the moment of New Year's Eve. Over the years, people in Times Square have developed a habit of writing wishes on the confetti they catch.

Every New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square ends with about 50 tons of trash left behind. It takes sanitation workers two days to clean up. The cleanup begins as soon as the crowds have thinned out. About 150 workers, 25 supervisors, two police officers and two managers are mobilized to clean up the “battlefield”.

The ball used in the New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square is located in the One Times Square building. This ball is the highlight of the New Year's Eve celebration. When there is one minute left until the new year, the ball will descend from the roof of the building (43 m) to the first floor within 60 seconds, along a specially designed column. The time the ball begins to descend - at 11:59 pm (local time), and the time the path is completed - exactly 12 o'clock, marking the moment of transition from the old year to the new year. Before the ball drop ceremony in Times Square, there are often many exciting cultural performances.

According to Dantri