This time, new year is met with revelry

Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 1, 2001

A year after fretting about what the new year may bring, the world seemed ready to celebrate this time around. Instead of hoarding water and canned goods, people stocked up on champagne and fireworks.

Yes, after weeks of political suspense, months of a Cuban boy's custody drama and a year of ongoing conflict in various regions, the world seems ready for a party.

Snow-plow drivers in New York City spent Sunday clearing about a foot of snow from Times Square in preparation for more than 500,000 people expected for the big New Year's Eve celebration.

While the ringing in of 2001 wasn't expected to be as big as last year's bash, which was attended by 2-million, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani predicted the snow would make it "even more beautiful."

Former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali was given the honor of pressing the button to start the descent of Times Square's 1,070-pound Waterford crystal ball, which lights up at midnight. Like last year, the manhole covers in the area were welded shut, trash cans were removed as a security precaution and thousands of police officers were assigned to the area.

Las Vegas and Denver also threw "real millennium" bashes, with hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on fireworks, to make up for fizzled celebrations last year.

In Boston, officials orchestrating the long-running Big Dig highway project threw an underground New Year's Eve party, opening its tunnels, the world's largest construction project, to revelers.

In Philadelphia, about 500 people, most wearing gray sweat suits and blue knit caps like Rocky Balboa, ran from City Hall to the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to ring in 2001 and mark the 100th birthday of City Hall with the city's second "Rocky Run."

Detroit celebrated its 300th birthday, and its major New Year's Gala incorporated the opening of a time capsule from 1901.

But it may have been the revelers at the Bourbon Street Pub in Key West who had the strangest New Year's Eve celebration on tap: the dropping of a red, 6-foot high-heel shoe carrying drag queen "Sushi" from a balcony in at the stroke of midnight.

Much of the world welcomed 2001 with fireworks, good cheer and optimism, and even in troubled lands the hope of a better future prevailed.

Yugoslavia's celebrations, the first since the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic, were dubbed "the first free New Year."

Bundled up in a red cloak on an unusually cold Roman night, Pope John Paul II made a midnight New Year's Eve appearance to a cheering crowd and wished the world peace and prosperity.

"I wish that the new millennium brings to all nations peace, justice, brotherhood and prosperity," the pope said.

Pakistan's militant Muslims warned against celebrations and deployed extra soldiers to make sure no dancing took place.

In Paris, a thousand drummers from all over Europe were recruited to beat the countdown to midnight in unison at the Georges Pompidou Center.

Fifteen parachutists from the United States, Europe and Asia leaped from the old millennium to the new as midnight chimed Sunday, using the world's tallest skyscrapers as a launch pad.

"What a great new year!" cried an exuberant Ed Trick, 38, a carpenter from Petaluma, Calif., one of the nine Americans who joined in the dive from Malaysia's Petronas Twin towers, each 1,483 feet tall.

Russians marked the holiday with gift-giving and decorating homes with images of the Santa Claus-like Dyed Moroz (Grandfather Frost) and his sidekick Snegurochka (Snow Maiden). Christmas, an official holiday since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, is celebrated on Jan. 7 on the Orthodox calendar.

"We are leaving behind another year, a year of happy and tragic events, a year of difficult decisions," Russian President Vladimir Putin, marking the end of his first year in power, said in a statement delivered to each of Russia's regions.

In London, the Millennium Dome had a rare full house for a dance party before closing for good, ending a year of controversy over the expense of building the world's largest enclosed space and its inability to attract enough customers to pay its own way.

In downtown Istanbul, Turkey, a bomb explosion injured 10 people early Monday and caused thousands of Turks celebrating New Year's Eve to briefly flee the area in panic.

In Japan, as the Year of the Dragon gave way to the Year of the Snake at midnight Sunday, temple bells sounded 108 times, symbolically driving out the 108 sins in the Buddhist catalog.

Taiwan marked New Year's Day by lifting a 51-year-old ban on voyages from tiny Taiwanese-controlled islets near the Chinese coast to the mainland. Supporters look on the first legal voyage today -- along a route taken by smugglers for years -- as a step toward easing tensions with the rival Beijing government.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright