Word: year
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When the New York Times officially opened its new headquarters in Times Square in 1904, owner Alfred Ochs not only convinced the city to rename the intersection formerly known as Longacre Square, but he also threw a grand party to commemorate the milestone. The New Year's Eve soiree started with an all-day street festival, transitioned to a fireworks display ending with cheers at midnight from the crowd of more than 200,000. Previous New Year's Eve celebrations typically took place outside of Old Trinity Church in Manhattan's financial district. But by contemporary standards these weren...
...decades, residents of U.S. cities would synchronize their pocketwatches using a giant globe that would descend from a pole in a public space to mark the exact hour. Ochs conceived of an ornate "time ball" that would descend just before midnight to mark the exact end of the year. The first ball to drop - an illuminated 400-pound iron-and-wood orb - was lowered from a flagpole. Tradition took root and the ball has heralded a new beginning almost every year since - in 1942 and 1943, during World War II, the ball was temporarily put out of commission...
...This year's ball - first unveiled for the 2008 drop - is 12 feet in diameter (double the size of balls past) and weighs 11,875 pounds; it sparkles with 32,256 LED lights and 2,668 crystals. It's not the only thing that's gotten bigger since the 1900s; a crowd estimated at a million people will be celebrating in Times Square on Dec. 31, and millions more will be watching worldwide...
...targets offered by terrorist foes frustrates military planners. Too often, they end up bombing chemical-weapons factories that turn out to be pharmaceutical plants (as in Sudan in 1998) or vainly firing missiles that do little more than rustle the flaps on terrorists' tents (in Afghanistan the same year). Such strikes run the risk of highlighting America's impotence rather than its might...
Certain truths are tied to March Madness, that time of year when the NCAA men's basketball tournament turns every cubicle dweller into a college-hoops junkie. That batty lady who picks the winners based on the cuteness of the mascots will crush you in your office pool. Duke will have a guy who gets under your skin. And the Harvard basketball players will be locked in the library instead of pulling off a Cinderella upset...