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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel Bomb here with a special holiday classic for you.

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Speaker 1: In this one, we go into the traditions behind the

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Speaker 1: New Year's Eve ball drop. I mean, countdowns seem natural,

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Speaker 1: but why the drop? Plus how the ball drop led

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Speaker 1: to celebrants dropping all kinds of other things to ring

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Speaker 1: in the new year. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel Bomb Here.

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Speaker 1: Every December thirty first, wrongs of revelers eager to ring

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Speaker 1: in a new year crowd into New York City's Times

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Speaker 1: Square in the final minutes of the year. As the

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Speaker 1: clock ticks away seconds towards midnight, an opulent, oversized ball

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Speaker 1: descends from above, and when it reaches its destination, the

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Speaker 1: crowd cheers. The current Times Square ball is the seventh

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Speaker 1: version to perform the duty of ringing in the new year.

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Speaker 1: The tradition began in nineteen oh seven, when a ball

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Speaker 1: made of iron and wood covered in one hundred light

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Speaker 1: bulbs descended a flagpole. The latest version of the ball

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Speaker 1: boasts two thousand, six hundred and eighty eight crystal triangles

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Speaker 1: and thirty two two hundred and fifty six led modules.

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Speaker 1: The new Year's ball drop has its roots in naval history,

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Speaker 1: inspired by the time balls introduced in the early eighteen hundreds.

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Speaker 1: These devices were affixed to towers and coastal towns and

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Speaker 1: would drop a ball at a precise moment of the

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Speaker 1: day to alert nearby ship's captains when to precisely set

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Speaker 1: their navigational tools called chronometers. The current New Year's tradition

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Speaker 1: is a particularly American affair, and the times square ball

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Speaker 1: drop has inspired numerous imitators around the country and even

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Speaker 1: around the world. So today, which is New Year's Eve,

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Speaker 1: if you're listening on the day that this episode comes out,

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Speaker 1: I wanted to share some of the weirdest, most wonderful

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Speaker 1: things people drop to ring in the New year. For

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Speaker 1: more than two decades, a city in central Pennsylvania has

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Speaker 1: celebrated the turn of the calendar by dropping a mass

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Speaker 1: of bologney. The spiced tube meat is popular in the region,

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Speaker 1: and Lebanon, Pennsylvania, is home to several producers. Plus there's

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Speaker 1: an annual balooney festival every January. For the first twenty

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Speaker 1: years of the New Year's event, a single two hundred

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Speaker 1: pound bloony that's about ninety kilos would be lowered by

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Speaker 1: an industrial crane right before midnight. In twenty sixteen, though,

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Speaker 1: the tradition shifted from one massive boloone to twenty individual

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Speaker 1: blocks of bolony weighing in at ten pounds or four

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Speaker 1: and a half kilos each. The reason for the change

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Speaker 1: the organizers of the annual event donate the meat to

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Speaker 1: charity after the drop, and it took too long in

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Speaker 1: the hours after midnight to slice up one gigantic baloney. Apparently,

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Speaker 1: for twenty twenty, a disco ball will be attached to

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Speaker 1: the bolony. Let's go next to Saint George's, Bermuda, where

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Speaker 1: revelers don't just get to celebrate a few hours before

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Speaker 1: most of the rest of the Western Hemisphere. They get

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Speaker 1: to watch a gigantic onion drop at the stroke of

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Speaker 1: midnight as musicians, artists, performers and street food vendors liven

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Speaker 1: up King's Square. Saint George's, founded in sixteen twelve, was

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Speaker 1: Bermuda's first English settlement, and the island became a major

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Speaker 1: producer and exporter of onions. A glittering golden onion covered

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Speaker 1: in light bulbs descends above the square, which overlooks Hamilton

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Speaker 1: Harbor and a laser show and fireworks traditionally follow the event,

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Speaker 1: but back to Pennsylvania. In addition to the Beoloni that

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Speaker 1: drops in Lebanon, a less than two hours away, the

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Speaker 1: city of Bethlehem celebrates with an enormous peep drop that

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Speaker 1: wraps up a two day celebration known as Peep's Fest.

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Speaker 1: This sugary and divisive marshmallow confection is generally produced in

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Speaker 1: the shape of a bird, and it's most commonly found

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Speaker 1: in the US around the Easter holiday. Just Born. The

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Speaker 1: Bethlehem based candy company responsible for Peeps also makes Mike

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Speaker 1: and Ikes and Hot Tomali's. The giant peep dropped on

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Speaker 1: New Year's Eve weighs four hundred pounds that's about one

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Speaker 1: hundred and eighty kilos. And finally, let's head to sunny

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Speaker 1: Arizona and the city of show Low. This locale gets

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Speaker 1: its unique name from its days as a frontier town

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Speaker 1: without a name. The story goes that two rival cowboys

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Speaker 1: and ranch co odors were playing an extended game of poker,

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Speaker 1: and the loser would vacate the city, leaving the other

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Speaker 1: with hundreds of acres of land. The deciding hand in

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Speaker 1: who would stay and who would go, according to city lore,

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Speaker 1: would belong to whichever cowboy could show Low by holding

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Speaker 1: the lowest value card possible, and the winner turned over

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Speaker 1: a two of Clubs. These days, not only is the

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Speaker 1: city's main street named Deuce of Clubs, but show Low

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Speaker 1: drops a colossal illuminated playing card every December thirty first.

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Speaker 1: It's just a block away from where a statue commemorating

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Speaker 1: the card game once stood Once stood. Because the original

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Speaker 1: fiberglass statue accidentally burned down during a candlelight vigil in

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Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, it's being replaced by a bronze one. Here's

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Speaker 1: to a safe and flame free New Year's Eve. Today's

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Speaker 1: episode is based on the article for totally random things

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Speaker 1: people drop on New Year's Eve on how stuffworks dot com,

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Speaker 1: written by Christopher Hasiotis. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio

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Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced

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Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

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Speaker 1: favorite shows.