Fun Facts about New Year’s Eve

Whether you're heading into Manhattan to see the ball drop live in Times Square or watching it drop on the 40th anniversary show of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve tonight, it's safe to say that the Times Square ball drop has been a time-honored way to ring in the new year.

Surely many a Lindenhurst resident has made the into the city at least once in their lives to experience the electricity of New York on New Year's Eve.

But even if there are residents who haven't, they've surely seen the ball drop on television.

It's become a sort of tradition to tune in, whether it's with friends and family or and together at home or heading to a and watching it on a TV screen there.

But as symbolic as the Times Square ball drop is to many of us as we welcome the new year, some might wonder if there's really an official countdown to Eve.

Well, wonder no more: there is. Check out http://timessquarenyc.org/nye/nye.html. That's about official as it gets. The site also has lots of other neat facts, for example New York first celebrated New Year's Eve in Times Square in 1904.

The inaugural bash commemorated the official opening of the new headquarters of The New York Times. The all-day street festival culminated in a fireworks display set off from the base of the tower, and at midnight the joyful sounds from a crowd of 200,000 party-goers. The night was a rousing success, but two years later the city banned the fireworks display.

Ultimately the powers that be arranged to have a large, illuminated, 700-pound iron and wood ball lowered from the tower flagpole precisely at midnight. And by 1914 New Year's Eve in Times Square was a permanent part of our culture.

However, during World War II the glowing Ball was temporarily retired. The crowds who still gathered in Times Square greeted the new year with a minute of silence followed by chimes ringing out from sound trucks parked nearby.

Today New Year's Eve in Times Square is a bonafide international phenomenon. Each year hundreds of thousands of people still gather and wait for hours in the cold for the famous ball-lowering ceremony.

Visit http://www.timessquarenyc.org/events/new-years-eve/about-the-new-years-eve-ball/index.aspx to learn fun facts about the actual ball that drops each year.

Thanks to satellite technology, Lindy residents won't the only ones watching it drop this New Year's Eve as a worldwide audience estimated at more than one billion people will be gazing upon one of the world's most symbolic ways to welcome in 2012.

Happy New Year! Stay safe and best wishes for a new year filled with lots of good health, happiness, prosperity, love and laughter!

And be sure to tell us in the comments below how you're spending New Year's Eve.