1

The ball drop only exists because the city banned fireworks

New Year’s Eve celebrations began in Times Square as early as 1904. That year, New York Times owner Adolph Ochs threw an extravagant fireworks party to christen the paper’s new headquarters.

Two years later, the city banned fireworks over fire hazard concerns. Ochs’ chief electrician, Walter Palmer, proposed a "time-ball" to replace the pyrotechnics. This would imitate a navigational device used by ships. So, on December 31, 1907, a 700-pound iron-and-wood ball, five feet in diameter, lit by 100 twenty-five-watt bulbs, made its first descent from the flagpole atop One Times Square.

The tradition has continued every year since, except in the wartime dimouts of 1942 and 1943. Today’s ball is the ninth version and is the largest ever: 12.5 feet wide, weighing 12,350 pounds, and covered in 5,280 handcrafted Waterford crystal discs.

2

It used to be called "Satan’s Circus"

The area was once called Longacre Square, named after London’s carriage district, because the neighborhood was the center of New York City’s horse carriage industry. It was also one of the most vice-ridden corners of Manhattan. In 1901, the surrounding blocks contained 132 brothels and at least as many saloons. Police called the area "the Tenderloin." Locals called it "Satan’s Circus."

The transformation began when the New York Times decided to build its new headquarters there, betting on the city’s first subway line, which was already planned to run beneath the block. In 1904, the area was officially renamed Times Square in a public ceremony. Later that year, the newspaper moved into its gleaming new tower, then the city’s second-tallest building. The Times only stayed there for 9 years before relocating to larger offices on West 43rd Street. But the name it left behind proved permanent.

3

It was once one of the most dangerous blocks in America

While it lost its "Satan’s Circus" nickname long ago, the tourist-friendly Times Square most visitors know today is almost unrecognizable from what it was just four decades ago. By 1984, more than 2,300 crimes were being committed every year within a single-block radius.

The streets were dominated by drug dealers, street crime, porn and peep show theaters, and open prostitution. The TKTS discount theater ticket booth, opened in 1973, was conceived as an emergency measure, an attempt to pull foot traffic back into a neighborhood that businesses had abandoned. The City of New York and the State of New York, as well as private investors and the non-profit Times Square Alliance, collaborated to reduce the crime rate and welcome the commerce and brands that eventually turned Times Square into a tourist hub.

By 2001, major felony offenses had fallen 62.3% from their 1993 peak. Today, Times Square is one of the most policed and most surveilled public spaces in the United States, with a dedicated NYPD substation on the premises. The same block that was America’s most notorious danger zone now draws 50 million visitors a year.

4

The TKTS red stairs are actually a roof

Most of the millions of tourists who climb the famous ruby-red stairs in Times Square assume they’re just a viewing platform. In fact, they’re a roof. Underneath the 27 steps sits the TKTS booth, operated by the Theatre Development Fund, where theatergoers can buy same-day Broadway and off-Broadway tickets at discounts of up to 50%.

In 1999, a design competition was held for a permanent replacement. The winning concept proposed building the new booth’s roof as a public staircase. It would be a bleacher-style ascent that would give visitors an elevated vantage point over the square. The structure was completed in October 2008. It glows red at night because it is lit entirely from below. About 13,000 people walk past it every day.

5

New York City law requires the lights to stay on

Did you know that Times Square stays aglow by law? A 1987 New York City zoning ordinance requires all new developments and major enlargements on blocks in the area, with frontage on Seventh Avenue or Broadway, to include large-scale illuminated signage.

The regulation was introduced to protect the district’s visual character after years of blank-faced modernist towers had dulled its energy. Buildings are legally required to display a minimum illuminated surface area, and signage must remain lit during designated hours.

6

The most famous building there is almost empty

One Times Square building is famous; the whole world watches the ball drop from it every New Year's Eve. But few people know that it’s all but empty inside. It has no regular office tenants. Its upper floors are largely unused.

When the New York Times vacated in 1913, the building passed through several owners and eventually became what it is today: a structure whose primary economic purpose is its skin. Still, the billboard faces on its exterior generate millions of dollars per year — a single advertising slot can command upwards of $4 million annually. In effect, One Times Square is a 25-story billboard dressed as a skyscraper.

7

50 million people visit every year, more than all Disney Parks combined

Times Square draws an estimated 50 million visitors annually —more than all Disney theme parks worldwide combined. On a typical day, approximately 330,000 people pass through. On peak days, that number exceeds 460,000.

Its official website notes that more people walk through Times Square each year than live in the entire country of Iceland. Visitor spending totals roughly $4.8 billion per year, and for every dollar a tourist spends anywhere in New York City, approximately 22 cents are spent within Times Square’s few blocks.

After a dip during the pandemic, tourism to New York City has rebounded strongly, with the city welcoming over 65 million visitors in 2025 and projecting 67 million in 2027. Times Square remains the single biggest draw within the city, accounting for a disproportionate share of that spending.

8

It’s not actually a square; it’s two triangles

Geometrically speaking, Times Square is not a square. It’s more like a bowtie; two elongated triangles formed where Broadway, a diagonal road that predates the Manhattan street grid by centuries, cuts across Seventh Avenue.

The city’s famous grid was laid out by the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811. Broadway, an ancient Indigenous trade route that became a colonial road, was already there and simply too important to straighten. Every point where it crosses a major avenue creates an irregular intersection, and Times Square is the most famous of them.

9

It has witnessed incredible moments in American history

Times Square has functioned, again and again, as the place where Americans gather when history breaks. On May 8, 1945, a.k.a. V-E Day, crowds flooded the streets to celebrate the end of the war in Europe. Three months later, on August 14, 1945, a.k.a. V-J Day, the moment Japan’s surrender was announced, ending World War II entirely, the square erupted again.

Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was in the crowd and photographed a sailor spontaneously grabbing a nurse in white uniform and kissing her, an image published in the magazine. Also, on December 31, 1999, the world watched Times Square’s ball drop as the year 2000 arrived and Y2K fears proved unfounded.

10

Buildings are required by law to display bright signage

The exterior of a Times Square building generates more revenue per square foot than almost any interior use could. Running a single billboard requires no HVAC, no tenant improvements, no elevator maintenance, no building management. It requires a screen and electricity. The result is a district where the most valuable real estate in America is literally the surface of things.

Building owners sometimes spend tens of millions of dollars on facade renovations not to improve the building but to improve the view of the building.

1

Rachel Jackson: A "Bigamy" scandal (1820s)

In 1791, a young Andrew Jackson married Rachel Donelson. Both believed her first husband, Captain Lewis Robards, had successfully finalized their divorce. Apparently, Robards didn’t file the petition, making her marriage to Jackson technically bigamous. Once the divorce went through in 1794, they officially remarried.

During the 1828 presidential campaign, Jackson’s political opponents used this legal mistake against him. They branded Rachel a loose woman and a bigamist in pamphlets scattered across the country. The intense public shaming broke her spirit and deteriorated her health. She suffered a fatal heart attack just days before Jackson’s inauguration, leaving the newly elected president heartbroken and extremely bitter toward his political rivals for the rest of his life.

2

Grover Cleveland’s illegitimate child (1884)

Decades later, another personal bombshell rocked another presidential race. Republican opponents revealed that Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland, a bachelor praised for his integrity, had fathered a child out of wedlock with a widow called Maria Halpin ten years before.

Republicans paraded through the streets chanting, "Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?" Instead of denying the affair or trying to bury it, Cleveland instructed his campaign managers to do something radical: "Tell the truth." He admitted to supporting the child financially. His honesty caught his opponents off guard and won over voters who were tired of such dirty political tactics.

3

The Crédit Mobilier scandal (1872)

This particular scandal stands as one of the most shameless corporate schemes of the Gilded Age. Stockholders of the Union Pacific Railroad formed a fraudulent construction company called Crédit Mobilier of America . Then, they hired themselves to build the transcontinental railroad at inflated prices, pocketing tens of millions of dollars in federal subsidies.

To prevent Congress from investigating their profit margins, Congressman Oakes Ames distributed discounted shares of the company’s stock to influential politicians, including Vice President Schuyler Colfax. When the press exposed the story in 1872, the revelation that lawmakers were bribing themselves tarnished the legacy of the Ulysses S. Grant administration.

4

The Whiskey Ring scandal (1875)

A few years later, another financial disaster hit the Grant administration. The Whiskey Ring was a widespread conspiracy involving distillers, distributors, and internal federal tax officials who stole millions of dollars in liquor taxes.

Using a complex web of bribes and falsified records, the ring defrauded the U.S. Treasury. The scandal reached the inner circle of power when President Grant’s own private secretary, Orville Babcock, was indicted as a ringleader. Grant provided a deposition in his secretary’s defense. While this saved Babcock from prison, it permanently damaged the president’s reputation.

5

The Teapot Dome scandal (1920s)

Until Watergate occurred, Teapot Dome was synonymous with political corruption. During the administration of Warren G. Harding, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall took control of valuable federal oil reserves located at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California.

Instead of opening these fields up for competitive bidding among energy companies, Fall secretly leased the drilling rights to private oil tycoons in exchange for more than $400,000 in bribes.

6

The Chappaquiddick incident (1969)

By the mid-20th century, the nature of political scandals shifted. Secrets began to involve personal crisis and tragic losses.

In July 1969, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy drove his car off a narrow wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. The vehicle overturned into a tidal pond, trapping and drowning his passenger, 28-year-old campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy managed to escape but failed to report the fatal accident to the police for ten hours. Although he eventually pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, his delayed reaction ended his lifelong presidential ambitions.

7

The Pentagon Papers (1971)

In 1971, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg felt the moral obligation to leak a top-secret 7,000-page Department of Defense study detailing U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.

Published by The New York Times , the papers exposed a disturbing truth: successive administrations had systematically lied to both Congress and the American public. The documents proved that the government had expanded the war and increased troop counts while knowing that the conflict was unwinnable. The Supreme Court eventually rejected the government’s attempts to block the leaks, making a victory for freedom of the press.

8

The Watergate scandal (1972–1974)

This is, probably, the ultimate American political scandal. In June 1972, five men were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.

The break in itself was minor compared to the illegal cover-up orchestrated by President Richard Nixon and his collaborators. From paying hush money to instructing the CIA to block the FBI’s investigation, Nixon’s complicity was exposed via his own secret White House taping system. Facing impeachment and conviction by the Senate, Nixon became the first and only U.S. president to resign from office.

9

The "Keating Five" (Late 1980s)

During the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s, five U.S. Senators—John McCain, Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, John Glenn, and Donald Riegle—came under intense scrutiny.

The group was accused of intervening with federal banking regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, the chairman of Lincoln Savings and Loan, who had contributed to their political campaigns. Lincoln eventually collapsed, costing American taxpayers over $3 billion. Although the Senate Ethics Committee ultimately cleared the senators of corruption, they were publicly condemned.

10

The Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky affair (1998)

The 20th century ended with a scandal that blended personal infidelity with a constitutional crisis. In 1998, news broke that President Bill Clinton had an intimate relationship with a 21-year-old White House intern called Monica Lewinsky.

The affair turned into a legal battle when Clinton denied the relationship under oath during an unrelated sexual harassment lawsuit. The investigation led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. The Senate ultimately acquitted him, yet he couldn’t bypass the media circus.

1

He was of French descent

While we think of Paul Revere as an early American icon, his roots lay across the Atlantic. His father, Apollos Rivoire, was a French Huguenot (a member of the French Reformed Church) who fled religious persecution and immigrated to Boston as a teenager.

To fit in his new home, Apollos Americanized the family name to "Revere". Paul was born in late 1734 or early 1735, the son of Apollos and a Boston local called Deborah Hichborn. Apollos was so interested in blending in that he never taught his children to speak and read French. In fact, a young Paul Revere even fought against the French as part of the colonial forces during the French and Indian War.

2

He was an accomplished artisan

Before he was a revolutionary, Revere was a master craftsman. He learned the art of silversmithing from his father and quickly gained a reputation as an accomplished artisan. He designed seals, coats of arms, plate engravings, and silver teapots.

Revere also used his engraving skills to create sharp political cartoons that mocked the British. His most famous artistic work was a sensationalized engraving of the 1770 Boston Massacre. It wasn’t entirely historically accurate, but it spread through the colonies, stirring up the anti-British sentiment that laid the groundwork for the Revolution.

3

He worked as an amateur dentist

When silversmithing work ran slow, Revere picked up a side hustle: dentistry. He started cleaning teeth and crafting dental prosthetics out of animal teeth and walrus ivory for the people of Boston.

This amateur dental career actually led to a major moment in American history. In 1775, Revere’s close friend, Dr. Joseph Warren, was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill and buried in an unmarked mass grave by British soldiers. A year later, when the bodies were exhumed, the remains were unrecognizable. Yet, Revere was able to identify Warren’s body by recognizing the specific ivory tooth and custom wire bridge he had personally crafted for his friend. It’s widely considered one of the earliest documented cases of forensic dentistry in the United States.

4

He played a key role in early intelligence efforts

Long before the CIA existed, Paul Revere was working as a pioneer of organized American espionage. As a member of the Sons of Liberty, Revere wanted to track British movements closely. In 1774, he helped form a spy group known as "the mechanics" or the "Liberty Boys".

These men were Bostonian blacksmiths, artisans, and laborers who used their ordinary routines to watch British troops, listening for rumors of upcoming military actions. The spies would gather at the city’s historic Green Dragon Tavern to trade secrets and map out British movements.

5

Longfellow's inaccurate poem

If your knowledge of Revere comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous 1861 poem, "Paul Revere's Ride," you’ve been given a romanticized version of history. Longfellow wrote the poem nearly a century later, on the brink of the American Civil War, to stir up national pride.

In reality, Revere wasn’t a lone rider. The night of April 18, 1775, Revere set out with two other main horsemen: William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott. As they triggered local alarms, dozens of other riders joined the effort. By midnight, more than 40 people were racing across the country, spreading the word. Furthermore, Revere never actually made it to his final destination of Concord. He was captured and briefly detained by a British patrol.

6

He didn’t even own a horse for his midnight ride

It’s hard to imagine the midnight ride without Revere’s faithful steed, but the truth is, Revere didn’t even own a horse when the fateful night arrived. Because he had to be quietly rowed across the Charles River, bringing a horse from Boston was out of the question.

Once he reached Charlestown, he had to find a ride. He ended up borrowing a horse from a sympathetic local merchant called John Larkin. Legend has it that this borrowed mare was named "Brown Beauty". Sadly, after Revere was captured later that night, the soldiers confiscated the horse, and she was never seen again.

7

He didn’t actually say THAT

"The British are coming!" is one of the most famous quotes in American history, but Revere never said it. The countryside was crawling with British soldiers, so his mission had to be very quiet. Yelling at the top of his lungs would have landed him in military prison before he even left town. Instead, he went door to door delivering the warning quietly to specific patriots.

Also, the phrase wouldn’t have made sense to the colonists. At the moment in 1775, the colonists still considered themselves British citizens. Instead, historical accounts indicate that Revere used the phrase, "The Regulars are coming out!" "Regulars" was the standard colonial term for the standing British army troops.

8

His military record wasn't outstanding

Although Revere was a phenomenal community organizer and courier, his transition into traditional military leadership didn’t go smoothly. During the war, he served as a major and later a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts State Artillery. His military career hit a disastrous low point in the summer of 1779 during the Penobscot Expedition in modern-day Maine.

The mission was a total failure for the Americans. In the aftermath, Revere was accused of cowardice, laziness, and disobedience. He faced a court-martial and spent several years fighting to clear his name. He was ultimately acquitted of all charges in 1782, but the incident permanently tarnished his dreams of military glory.

9

Fatherhood came early… and often

If you think managing a household today is stressful, consider Paul Revere’s domestic life: he fathered an astonishing 16 children.

He had his first eight children with his first wife, Sarah Orne. Following her death in 1773, he remarried a woman called Rachel Walker, with whom he had another eight children. They crammed this huge family into a small townhouse at 19 North Square in downtown Boston. Amazingly for the 18th century, 11 of his 16 children survived to adulthood.

10

Revere Copper Products, Inc. is still in operation

After the Revolution ended, Revere left politics and went back to industry with some success. He opened a hardware store, a foundry, and the first rolling copper mill in the United States.

In fact, his business supplied the copper used to protect the hull of the USS Constitution. He also cast nearly 1,000 church bells, many of which still ring across New England today. Amazingly, the company he founded, Revere Copper Products, Inc., is still in business. Paul Revere passed away in 1818 at the age of 83, leaving behind a legacy more industrious than a single night’s ride.