Once every 12 months people around the world ring in the new year.

How they do this however can differ radically from place to place.

New Year's traditions tend to be even more varied than Christmas traditions.

As with Christmas, traditions involve drinks, food, and rituals, but usually

with a lot more noise and staying up later. Learn more about the traditions surrounding

how we ring in the new year on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. It would be impossible to cover every single New Year's tradition just because there are so many of them.

So in this episode, I'll try to go over some of the world's biggest and most interesting New Year's

traditions. And we might as well start with one of the most famous New Year's traditions, the dropping of the ball in Times Square in New York.

The tradition is pretty simple. There is a large ball attached to a pole on the top of the one Times Square building.

At 1159 PM, the ball starts to move down the pole and at midnight the ball hits the bottom

to welcome in the new year.

The first ball drop took place on December 31st, 1907. It was arranged by Adolf Oax, the owner of the New York

Times, who also owned the building back then. Ox devised the event to replace a fireworks

display that had previously taken place.

In the 125 years since the ball drop began, it has been held every year, save for 1942 and

1943, due to blackout restrictions during World War II.

People did gather in Times Square during the war,

but they just observed a moment of silence

followed by church bells.

There have been four different balls that have been used in ball drop history.

The first ball in 1907 was 5 feet or 1.5

meters in diameter and had 100 incandescent light bulbs attached and it was made of

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