Question: What date was the first ball drop?
About the article "Times Square", section "New Year's Eve celebrations".

Candidate passages:
A drop kick is a type of kick in various codes of football.
It involves a player dropping the ball and then kicking it when it bounces off the ground.
It contrasts to a punt, wherein the player kicks the ball without letting it hit the ground first.
Drop kicks are most importantly used as a method of restarting play and scoring points in rugby union and rugby league.
Association football goalkeepers also often return the ball to play with drop kicks.
The kick was once in wide use in both Australian rules football and gridiron football, but is today rarely seen in either sport. 
A Galilean cannon is a device that demonstrates conservation of linear momentum.
It comprises a stack of balls, starting with a large, heavy ball at the base of the stack and progresses up to a small, lightweight ball at the top.
The basic idea is that this stack of balls can be dropped to the ground and almost all of the kinetic energy in the lower balls will be transferred to the topmost ball - which will rebound to many times the height from which it was dropped.
At first sight, the behavior seems highly counter-intuitive, but in fact is precisely what conservation of momentum requires.
The principal difficulty is in keeping the configuration of the balls stable during the initial drop.
Early descriptions involve some sort of glue/tape, tube, or net to align the balls.
A modern version of the Galilean cannon was sold by Edmund Scientific Corporation and is still sold as the "Astroblaster".
In this device, a heavy wire is threaded through all of the balls to keep them accurately aligned - but the principle is the same.
The resulting rebound is quite powerful; in fact, eye safety issues became so prevalent that this toy now comes with safety goggles.
It is possible to demonstrate the principle more simply with just two balls (a basketball and a tennis ball, for example).
Balance the tennis ball on top of the basketball and drop the pair to the ground.
The tennis ball will rebound to many times the height from which it was released. 
"In Cold Blood" was first published as a four-part serial in "The New Yorker", beginning with the September 25, 1965, issue.
The piece was an immediate sensation, particularly in Kansas, where the usual number of "New Yorker" copies sold out immediately.
"In Cold Blood" was first published in book form by Random House in January 1966.
The book, however, was copyrighted in 1965, and this date appears on the title page of most printings of the book and even in some library indices as the original publication date.
The Library of Congress lists 1966 as the publication date and 1965 as the copyright date.
The cover was created by S. Neil Fujita and features a hat pin with what appeared originally as a red drop of blood at its top end.
After Capote first saw the design, he requested that the drop be made a deeper shade of red to represent the passage of time since the incident.
A black border was added to the ominous image. 
Since it developed during a period when the spitball was legal and commonly used, and was similarly surprising in its motion, the knuckleball was sometimes called the "dry spitter".
Cicotte was widely reported to throw both the knuckleball and a variant on the spitball known as a "shine ball" (because he would "shine" one side of a dirty ball by rubbing it on his uniform).
However, Cicotte called the shine ball "a pure freak of the imagination", claiming that he did this to disconcert hitters but that the pitch was still a knuckleball.
Other names for the knuckleball have generally alluded to its motion and slower speed.
These include the flutterball, the floater, the dancer, the butterfly ball, the ghostball, and the bug.
The knuckle curve has a somewhat similar name because of the grip used to throw it (also with the knuckles or fingernails), but it is generally thrown harder and with spin.
The resulting motion of the pitch more closely resembles a curveball, which explains the combination name.
Toad Ramsey, a pitcher from 1885 to 1890, is credited in some later sources with being the first knuckleballer, apparently based primarily on accounts of how he gripped the ball; however, based on more contemporary descriptions of his pitch as an "immense drop ball", it may be that his pitch was a form of knuckle curve.
Two later pitchers, Jesse Haines and Freddie Fitzsimmons, were sometimes characterized as knuckleball pitchers even by their contemporaries, but in their cases this again refers to a harder-thrown, curving pitch that would probably not be called a knuckleball today.
Historically, the term "knuckle curve" had a usage that was different from what it has in the game today.
Many current pitchers throw a curveball using a grip with the index finger touching the ball with the knuckle or the fingertip (also called a spike curve).
This modern pitch type is unrelated to the knuckleball. 
The methods of scoring are:  Touchdown : Achieved when the ball is in possession of a player in the opponent's goal area, or when the ball in the possession of a player crosses or touches the plane of the opponent's goal-line, worth 6 points (5 points until 1956).
A touchdown in Canadian football is often referred to as a "major score" or simply a "major."
Conversion (or Convert) : After a touchdown, the team that scored attempts one scrimmage play from any point between the hash marks on or outside the opponents' line.
If they make what would normally be a field goal, they score one point; what would normally be a touchdown scores two points (a "two-point conversion").
No matter what happens on the convert attempt, play then continues with a kickoff (see below).
Field goal : Scored by a drop kick or place kick (except on a kickoff) when the ball, after being kicked and without again touching the ground, goes over the cross bar and between the goal posts (or between lines extended from the top of the goal posts) of the opponent's goal, worth three points.
Safety : Scored when the ball becomes dead in the possession of a team in its own goal area, or when the ball touches or crosses the dead-line, or side-line-in-goal and touches the ground, a player, or some object beyond these lines as a result of the team scored against making a play.
It is worth two points.
This is different from a "single" (see below) in that the team scored against begins with possession of the ball.
The most common safety is on a third down punt from the end zone, in which the kicker decides not to punt and keeps the ball in his team's own goal area.
The ball is then turned over to the receiving team (who gained the two points), and they begin their first down possession play from their own line on their side of the field.
Single : Scored when the ball becomes dead in the possession of a team in its own goal area, or when the ball touches or crosses the dead-line, or side-line-in-goal, and touches the ground, a player, or some object beyond these lines as a result of the ball having been kicked from the field of play into the goal area by the scoring team.
It is worth one point.
This is different from a safety (see above) in that team scored against receives possession of the ball after the score.
Officially, the single is called a "rouge" (French for "red") but is often referred to as a single.
The exact derivation of the term is unknown but it has been thought that in early Canadian football, the scoring of a single was signaled with a red flag.