(Photo and Video) Big cities entered the New Year with fireworks and drones

G.G./STA

31. 12. 2024, 15.17

Updated: 01/01/2025, 00:15

At 11 a.m. CET, the inhabitants of the island of Kiritimati or Christmas Island, which is part of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, which spans multiple time zones. Just 15 minutes behind Kiritimati, where about 7,000 people live, the New Year was also welcomed in the New Zealand Chatham Islands. The islands, with around 700 inhabitants, lie about 800 kilometers east of New Zealand and have their own time zone.

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At 12 o’clock Central European time, they entered the New Year in New Zealand, as well as in the island countries of Samoa and Tonga. In Auckland, New Zealand, as the first major city in 2025, they held a magnificent fireworks display that lit up the sky from the 328-meter-high Sky Tower. In the meantime, a light show was prepared in the capital Wellington.

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Soon after, even bigger fireworks followed in Sydney, Australia, where at 2 p.m. CET they traditionally ushered in the New Year with a pyrotechnic show next to the famous opera house and harbor bridge. The extraordinary spectacle, in which nine tons of pyrotechnics flew into the sky, was watched by more than a million people nearby, many of whom had already prepared areas with blankets and chairs in nearby parks in the morning. Fireworks brightened up the New Year in other major Australian cities, such as Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide.

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At 4 p.m. CET, the year 2025 began in Japan and South Korea, among others, where public celebrations are more restrained due to the plane crash. This was followed by the entry into the new year in Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam and Thailand. The year 2025 has also started in India. They especially proved themselves at midnight in Chinese cities.

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In Berlin, the central event will be at the Brandenburg Gate, and in London, the New Year will be greeted by the ringing of Big Ben. In the north of Germany, in parts of the United Kingdom and in Scandinavia, the celebration will be somewhat disrupted by the weather, especially strong winds. This led to the cancellation of outdoor celebrations on the German island of Sylt and in Edinburgh, among others.

In New York, as usual, they will welcome the New Year by lowering a nearly 5,400-kilogram crystal-covered ball in Times Square. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, they are also planning a big celebration with fireworks, where they expect around five million visitors, half of them on Copacabana beach.

The last country to welcome the New Year is American Samoa, which lies only 220 kilometers east of Samoa on the other side of the international date line. Behind it, on Wednesday at 1 p.m. CET, in 2025, the uninhabited Baker and Howland islands, which belong to the United States, will officially be.

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