With just days to go before the world rings in a new year — and new decade — Tom Brennan, master artisan with Fiskars, a division of Waterford, is hard at work to make sure the famed crystal ball in Times Square is ready to dazzle revelers at the stroke of midnight on January 1.
"This is the only moment in time that everybody pauses for just a moment," Brennan told Cheddar on Friday while standing next to the pièce de résistance. "We don't do this other times of the year."
A team of engineers is installing 192 new Waterford crystal triangles on the ball that features this year's unique design, which Waterford is calling "Gift of Goodwill," the latest in its "Greatest Gifts" series.
The new crystals will make up just a fraction of the 2,688 triangles on the ball, which measures 12 feet across and weighs nearly six tons.
The New Year's tradition has been going on in Times Square, the crossroads of the world, since 1904, and the first ball drop happened in 1907.
Brennan stresses that it's not just him, or the team on the ground in New York that pulls off this global feat. "It is a global togetherness," he said. Waterford has craftsmen working on the project in its factories in Ireland, plus the engineers and marketers.
"It's amazing to think that this small city in the southeast of Ireland with just 47,000 people are here on top of the world. We're going to have 1.2 billion people watching us in just a few days' time, so no pressure."
Our celebration of Pride Month continues here on Cheddar News, with a special segment on New York-based photographer Thomas Evans and his efforts to promote unity & equity.
Pop star Bebe Rexha was hit in the face and injured by a cellphone hurled from the audience at a hometown show in New York City Sunday night, and a man was arrested, police said.
Cheddar News is continuing our celebration of Pride Month as we highlight trail blazers throughout the LGBTQ+ community. Cheddar's own Baker Machado recently had the opportunity to sit down with the editor-in-chief of Them, a magazine that covers everything from culture to politics to fashion within the LGBTQ+ community.
If you're stressed out, worried, or just need to let off some steam, consider trying out smash therapy. Our own Shannon LaNier is on the scene to try it for himself.
OceanGate Expeditions on Thursday said pilot and chief executive Stockton Rush, along with passengers Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet “have sadly been lost.”
