The end and beginning of the year are a transition celebrated worldwide.    The first nation to celebrate New Year 2025  was Kiribati, at 5AM ET.  This is because the International Date Line where the day begins is in the Pacific Ocean. At 6AM ET came New Zealand. Then at 8AM ET, Sydney, Australia.  More than million watched, live. 10AM, Tokyo, Japan. 10AM ET, Seoul, South Korea. 11AM ET, Hong Kong. 11AM ET, Beijing, China. 11AM New York, Taipei, Taiwan, their tallest building, Taiwan 101. Midnight New York, Bangkok, Thailand. 3AM New York, Dubai, UAE, Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world. What are the final places to see the new year? Baker Island and Howland Island.  However, no one lives there. 6AM ET, American Samoa hits midnight. 5AM ET, Hawaii. 4AM ET, French Polynesia and Alaska. 3AM ET, the Pacific Coast of U.S. and Canada. Maybe the most seen new year celebration occurs at Times Square in New York City.   The following list is from...

The rush of Trump-mania, unfortunately, continues.  Who knows what he is really worth ( Forbes  now says more than $8 billion ), but his continued splurge of success from staying alive resulted in Trump Media & Technology Group, parent of the social media platform Truth Social,  jumping in value more than a billion dollars .  He has a 65% stake in the company, which is now worth $4.6 billion. Going on to some mundane nostalgia, I was watching on Music Choice this morning one of their music channels, and noted that two of the Silhouettes would have been around a 100-years old if they were still alive.  So I checked, and found this 2009 article entitled,  Last member of Silhouettes dies , noting that the Rev. John "Bootsie" Wilson, who was not an original, died at the age of 69.  This means he would have now have been 84.  But that's not 100. So I further researched and saw that  Earl Beal was born in 1924 .  Yup, 100 years. ...