New Year’s Eve as we know it has been happening for over 2,000 years. Today, it’s one of only a handful of holidays celebrated by the vast majority of the world. And as we prepare to make our final toasts to 2021, your friends at Mirador & Stovall at River City decided to take you back in time to three of the most noteworthy New Year’s Eve parties of all time.

Nothing Like Your First (46 B.C.)

We can thank good ‘ol Julius Caesar for the first New Year’s Eve and New Year's Day as we know them. You see, around 2,070 years ago, the commonly used Roman calendar had fallen out of sync with the sun. So Caesar consulted the world’s best astronomers and mathematicians to create the Julian calendar, the precursor to the Gregorian calendar that most of the world uses today. And as part of the updated calendar, Caesar instituted January 1 as the first day of the year. While probably not a huge party, it’s still the first, so it makes the list.

Times Square (1904)

The first-ever New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square began when The New York Times' owner Adolph Ochs decided to celebrate the opening of the newspaper's new One Times Square headquarters with a fireworks show on its southern roof. Over 200,000 people attended. After that, Adolph decided to make the fireworks celebration an annual event. The show got bigger each year. And then, in 1907, our boy Adolph introduced the world to the first-ever ball drop. And the rest is history.

Truman Makes It Official (1946)

While combat had ended back on May 8, 1945, President Harry S. Truman signed Presidential Proclamation 2714 on Dec. 31, 1946 – New Year’s Eve – officially ending all hostilities in World War II. Now, that must have been one incredible night!

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