• Elon Musk celebrated New Year's Eve at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.
• Musk was seen dancing with his son near Trump in a video shared on X.
• Musk has been staying in a $2,000-a-night cottage on Trump's estate, The New York Times reported.

Elon Musk rang in 2025 with a blowout party at President-elect Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.

In a video clip posted online, the world's richest man was spotted dancing with his son, X AE A-XII, perched on his shoulders near Trump.

The Tesla chief has reportedly been staying in a cottage on the property, just a few hundred feet from the main house on Trump's estate in Palm Beach, Florida. The New York Times reported that Musk moved into the property around Election Day.

The cottage has previously been rented out for at least $2,000 a night, a source told the Times.

The New Year's Eve gala was a star-studded affair, drawing celebrities, high-profile politicians, and close associates of Trump.

Among the guests pictured at the event were Musk's mother, Maye, Vice President-elect JD Vance, and Sen. Ted Cruz.

Boxing promoter Don King and Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, with whom Musk shares three children, were also in attendance.

Lara Trump, Trump's daughter-in-law, sang a cover of Tom Petty's song "I Won't Back Down" for the crowd and guests watched a fireworks display ahead of the countdown to midnight.

Donald Trump Jr, also celebrating his birthday, was accompanied by his rumored girlfriend, Bettina Anderson.

Meanwhile, the former prime minister of Australia, Scott Morrisson, shared a photo on X of him and his wife at the party posing with Trump and the incoming first lady, Melania Trump.

Trump spoke briefly to reporters as he entered the party, saying what he was looking forward to in 2025.

"Just a great year; I think we're going to do fantastically well as a country; we're going to bring it back; it has to be brought back," he said.

Trump also confirmed plans to attend the funeral of Jimmy Carter, the former US president who died at the age of 100 last week.

• In the US, a popular way to celebrate New Year's Eve is to watch the ball drop in Times Square.
• The tradition started in 1907, when the ball was made of iron and wood.
• After multiple redesigns, today's ball weighs 11,875 pounds and features 2,688 crystal panels.

2024 is coming to a close. So, as we reflect on all this year had to offer — the Paris Olympics, "Cowboy Carter," and "Wicked" may come to mind — it's time to ring in 2025 with a bit of fun.

Different countries are known for their own unique traditions to celebrate and bring good energy into the new year. In Denmark, for example, people celebrate New Year's Eve by breaking plates. Meanwhile, in Italy, it's tradition to wear red underwear. And of course, in the US, it's common to watch the Times Square ball drop.

The ball drop has been a New York City tradition for over a century, symbolizing new beginnings. But the ball itself has changed drastically since its original debut in 1907; then, it was crafted from iron and wood, measured 5 feet in diameter, and weighed 700 pounds, according to Times Square's website.

In contrast, today's ball is made with crystal, measures 12 feet in diameter, weighs 11,875 pounds, and is lit by more than 30,000 LEDs.

Whether you're one of the brave people who have traveled to New York City to watch the ball drop live, or you're planning to watch it from the comfort of your couch, here's a look back at how the tradition started and the Times Square ball's 117-year history.

Before the Times Square ball was invented, people would gather downtown at Trinity Church to hear the bells chime.

Before the ball's invention, people in New York City would gather outside Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan to hear the bells chime at midnight, PBS reported.

But after The New York Times moved offices to Midtown's Longacre Square — promptly renamed Times Square — in the early 1900s, the company started a midnight firework display to encourage people to celebrate farther north.

The fireworks were later banned by the city's police department, so Adolph Ochs, then-owner and publisher of The New York Times, commissioned the company's chief electrician, Walter Palmer, "to find a new light display," PBS reported.

The first Times Square ball dropped in 1907 to ring in 1908 and was made of iron and wood.

Palmer was inspired by a 19th-century maritime method of timekeeping, which involved dropping a ball at a certain time to help mariners ensure their timepieces were accurate, PBS reported.

The first Times Square New Year's Eve ball was built by Jacob Starr, an immigrant metalworker. It weighed 700 pounds, measured 5 feet in diameter, and featured 100 light bulbs.

Artkraft Strauss, Starr's company, was in charge of lowering the ball at midnight with an elaborate pulley system. When it dropped for the first time to ring in 1908, it started a tradition that remains more than 100 years later.

In 1920, the ball was redesigned and made of wrought iron.

Midway through the '20s, a less heavy ball replaced the original iron and wood one.

The new ball weighed 400 pounds and was made of wrought iron, per Times Square's website.

In 1942 and 1943, no ball was dropped in Times Square due to World War II.

1942 and 1943 are the only years to date that the Times Square ball was not dropped to ring in the new year.

At the time, the US was engaged in World War II and New York City participated in a dim-out to protect the city from attacks, according to the Museum of the City of New York.

The dim-out didn't keep crowds away, though, on New Year's Eve, people still gathered in Times Square.

In 1955, the ball was recreated and made entirely of aluminum.

The new ball was made of aluminum and only weighed 150 pounds, which is the lightest it's ever been.

It was used until 1980, as seen in the photo above, behind Russ Brown, then-superintendent of One Times Square.

From 1981 to 1988, the aluminum ball was transformed into an apple.

From 1981 to 1988, the Times Square ball was transformed into the "Big Apple Ball," complete with red light bulbs and a green stem to resemble an apple for the "I Love New York" marketing campaign, according to Times Square's website.

When the campaign ended, the ball returned to its white light bulbs along with a few upgrades.

The traditional aluminum ball returned in 1989 and was upgraded in 1995 to include aluminum skin, rhinestones, and strobes.

But perhaps the most important upgrade was the addition of computer controls that lowered the ball at midnight.

The aluminum ball dropped for the last time in 1998.

Ahead of the year 2000, the Times Square ball was completely transformed and redesigned using crystal.

To celebrate the turn of the millennium, the ball was redesigned by Waterford Crystal.

Each year, some of the 2,688 crystal panels are replaced; these new panels are designed and hand crafted to reflect a theme, Reuters reported in 2022.

For the ball's 100-year anniversary in 2007, it was upgraded with LEDs.

In 2017, the 2007 ball — known as the Centennial Ball — was displayed at Ripley's Believe It or Not in Times Square.

At the time, Stacy Shuster, then-director of marketing and sales at Ripley's New York, told Untapped New York that the 2007 ball featured 672 Waterford crystal triangles and 9,576 Philips Luxeon LEDs.

In 2008, the "Big Ball" was created to sit permanently atop One Times Square.

The ball can be seen on display year-round, just like it was here in July 2020.

2020's New Year's Eve ball was another showstopper despite the major changes to the tradition.

In 2020, Times Square was closed to the public on New Year's Eve due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the ball was still the star of the show.

The ball weighed 11,875 pounds and was 12 feet in diameter. As well as the usual 2,688 Waterford Crystals, it had 32,256 LED lights and displayed 16 million vibrant colors.

2021's ball drop was also scaled back, only allowing 15,000 spectators in comparison to its usual 58,000 people, and in-person viewers were required to wear masks and show proof of vaccination.

The ball was updated as a part of Waterford's "Gift of Wisdom" design for 2022.

Ahead of 2023, new crystals were added and COVID-related restrictions were dropped.

Nearly 200 new Waterford crystals were installed on the ball ahead of 2023's arrival with the theme, the "Gift of Love," Reuters reported. The crystals feature circles of intertwining love hearts.

And ahead of 2024, the ball was given a "new bow tie lighting pattern" in honor of Times Square's former nickname as "the bow tie," CBS reported.

Now, the Times Square ball will complete its final drop before being replaced in 2025.

This year's ball includes crystal triangles with two new designs, according to Times Square 2025 organizers: the "One Times Square" crystal design and the "Ever" crystal design.

The One Times Square design "features long linear cuts with a circle near the top" to represent the pole and building where the ball drop takes place.

Meanwhile, the Ever design "consists of three pairs of interlocking rings surrounded by diamond facets that provide the setting for the letter E" in honor of One Times Square becoming a new destination for vow ceremonies in 2025, according to organizers.

Michael Phillips, president of Jamestown (which owns One Times Square), told CBS that the current ball "will go onto the lower floors of the building as part of an immersive arts and culture exhibit" and that the new iteration will be "much more digitally interactive."

• A massive blackout in Puerto Rico left more than 1.3 million power-company customers in the dark.
• The power company, Luma Energy, said restoring power could take up to 48 hours.
• It said the outage appeared to have been caused by the failure of an underground power line.

A massive blackout hit Puerto Rico early Tuesday — and it could take days to restore power.

The outage, which happened around dawn, initially left nearly 90% of the private power company Luma Energy's 1.47 million customers without power, the company told The Associated Press.

Luma, in a statement, called the blackout island-wide. It said the issue appeared to have stemmed from the failure of an underground cable, though it also said the cause was still under investigation. The utility said that fully restoring power could take 24 to 48 hours.

On social media, Luma said it had begun restoring power in phases. The utility said that by 11 a.m. local time it had restored power to the Municipal Hospital of San Juan, among other locations. It said that as of 1 p.m., it had restored power to 44,700 customers, or about 3% of its customers without power. And by 3 p.m., it said it had restored power to more than 73,000 customers.

As of Tuesday afternoon, at least 1.1 million customers remained without power throughout the US island territory.

"Luma teams remain focused on the complex process of restoring service to all affected customers," the company said in a translated statement.

Puerto Rico has for years dealt with a sometimes rickety power system, highlighted in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017 and Hurricane Fiona in 2022.

Luma is in charge of distributing energy across the island, while a company called Genera PR provides the power. The New York Times said both had been under scrutiny because of the territory's frequent outages.

Ryan Pamplin, the CEO and cofounder of BlendJet who's based in Dorado, Puerto Rico, told Business Insider that Tuesday's blackout was "definitely the worst that I've seen in four years of living here."

"I've never seen — even during a hurricane — I've never seen the entire island lose power," he said.

Pamplin said power wasn't the only problem during a blackout. He said water pressure in Puerto Rico is typically low, and pumps are used to help increase it — but when the power goes out, so do the pumps. He said he'd never seen the water pressure in Dorado drop so low.

He said that there was no water coming out of his faucets on Tuesday and that only one of his toilets was sort of flushing.

In a statement posted on Facebook, translated by the Times, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said, "We are demanding answers."

He said the two power companies "must expedite the restart of the generating units outside the fault area and keep the people duly informed about the measures they are taking to restore service throughout the island."

The widespread outage comes as the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, has been trying to restructure its debt, which the AP said stood at more than $9 billion.

Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, argued on X that the federal government needed to step up and "end this cycle of insanity" as the island grapples with its unreliable electric grid.

A report from the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the City University of New York said more than 1.1 million Puerto Ricans lived in the New York metropolitan area in 2022.

Pablo José Hernández Rivera, the incoming resident commissioner of Puerto Rico — the territory's nonvoting member of the House of Representatives — said in a statement that he'd alerted federal officials to the urgency of Tuesday's situation.

"Once sworn in, I will collaborate closely with Congressional leaders and the incoming administrations in Puerto Rico and the United States to deliver real, lasting solutions," he said. "Our people deserve reliable energy and a brighter future — we will not settle for less."

The governor-elect of Puerto Rico, Jenniffer González, who's set to be sworn in on Thursday, also highlighted the territory's ailing power grid on social media.

"We can't keep relying on an energy system that fails our people," González said on X. "Today's blackout and the uncertainty around restoration continue to impact our economy and quality of life."

She said that stabilizing Puerto Rico's energy grid would be her top priority when she takes office.