For years I have been intrigued by the local celebrations across America where they “drop,” or in many cases lower, something from above to ring in the New Year. Many of these traditions are relatively recent and are based on the ball dropping in New York’s Times Square. I have been blogging about these celebrations since 2005, especially the quirky ones. I used to just stumble across them by chance, but eventually I discovered a wikipedia article that seemed to do a comprehensive job of listing them all. It also provides lots of links to the celebrations’ web sites or media coverage of the events. I summarized the article in several lists, which I found interesting.