Interesting New Year's Eve Stats

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The ball in Times Square has dropped 109 times since the tradition began back in 1907. It wasn't lowered in 1942 or 1943 because of WWII lighting restrictions in New York City at the time. The aluminum ball has actually grown in diameter from 5 feet to 12 feet and weighs 11,875 pounds. It has 2,688 Waterford crystals covering the ball. These crystals were made in Ireland. It takes 32,256 LED type lights to light up the ball and this creates 16 million colors and simply billions of kaleidoscopic patterns in it. It only takes about sixty seconds for the ball to drop from the 77 foot tall flagpole. After the ball drops about 30,000,000 pieces of colored paper cut into confetti will be blasted over the crowd of around 1,000,000 celebrators. It takes nearly 200 sanitation workers about eight hours to clean up the 48 tons of trash left in Times Square. It takes about thirty mechanical sweepers, 25 collection trucks, 40 blows and 40 hand brooms to bring the Square back to pristine condition. That's a lot of party hats, confetti, balloons, empty bottles and pizza boxes to clean up. The Travel Channel says that more than 2.4 million people gather in the coastal city of Copacabana in Brazil. They gather along the 2 1/2 mile stretch of beach. This city hosts the world's largest New Year's celebration. They throw flowers into the ocean at midnight. This is in homage to Lemanja, the goddess of the sea.