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."
Hollywood Actors Guild Vote to Authorize Strike Amid Ongoing Writers Strike
From Jake Paul's next big swing to the possible return of Meredith Grey, here's what's happening in entertainment.
It was a rare sight — a senior British royal testifying in a court of law. What Prince Harry said, both during cross-examination in the witness box Tuesday and in his written witness statement, was just as unusual.
If your summer could use a pop of color, look no further than fashion brand Never Fully Dressed, which is opening its first permanent U.S. store right here in New York City. Cheddar News correspondent Chloe Aiello is on the scene with founder Lucy Aylen.
Creating the 'Barbie' set took a lot of pink paint, so much pink paint that it wiped out one company's entire global supply of it.
The bodies of three men have been removed from the site of a collapsed six-story apartment building in Davenport, Iowa, about a week after part of the century-old structure tumbled to the ground, the city's police chief announced Monday.
From Superman NFTs to a 'Hocus Pocus' trilogy, here are your top entertainment headlines.
In celebration of Pride Month, Cheddar News anchor Baker Machado visited the Stonewall Inn in New York City and sat down with owner Stacy Lentz to talk about the historic events that took place at the bar more than 50 years ago.
The Writers Guild of America has confirmed plans for a strike action at the Apple HQ in Cupertino, CA on Monday, as the tech giant kicks off its Worldwide Developers Conference.
Ticket sales surpassed already lofty expectations for the sequel to the Oscar-winning Inside the Spider-Verse.
