Party Like It's 1999!

From Times Square to the Space Needle, hundreds of thousands of people celebrated amid pyrotechnics, balloons and confetti as they ushered in the new year with an eye toward the real party 365 days from now.

In short, a party like it's 1999.

Bundled in layers and wrapped in blankets, an estimated 500,000 people jammed Times Square in 20-degree weather that felt more like zero in the wind chill.

At the stroke of midnight, more than 15,000 balloons showered the crowd and fireworks and 42 spotlights, including the "50K Space Cannon" illuminated the sky. The light cannon is said to be visible from Mars.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Chinese gymnast Sang Lan, paralyzed in a fall at last summer's Goodwill Games, pressed the button that sent the New Year's Eve ball on its last, slow descent at One Times Square. It will be replaced by a Waterford crystal ball for New Year's Eve 1999.

CBS

Seattle's Space Needle.

It wasn't exactly Times Square, but about 5,000 people gathered in the Lake Erie resort city of Port Clinton, Ohio, to welcome 1999 with a salute to the town's biggest industry - sport fishing.

The crowd braved the 15-degree weather to watch a large Fiberglas walleye lowered from a crane.

Las Vegas authorities had canceled many outdoor activities to control the crowd this year. Still, an estimated 250,000 to 400,000 lined the Strip as the clock struck midnight.

Local resident Matt Berry, 25, opted for a subdued celebration.

"The past two years we would go with the crowd, but that was just too tiring," said Berry as he sat in a lawn chair, wrapped in a blanket. "This year we're just people watching. Next year we may go to Pasadena because we think they'll have trouble controlling the crowds here."

Just across the state line, in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., some revelers got a little too rowdy, as police arrested more than 100 people at a street party.

"It's typical New Year's craziness, bizarreness," said Leona Allen, a South Lake Tahoe police dispatcher. "It's just one major orgy and it gets really, really ugly."

In New Orleans, a celebration was canceled after fireworks being loaded onto a barge exploded minutes before the craft was to be towed into the Mississippi River for a New Year's Eve diplay. Two fireworks technicians were killed and a sheriff's deputy was severely burned.

Correspondent Karen Swensen of CBS affiliate WWL-TV in New Orleans reports that the cause of the explosion has not been determined and that agents from the federal Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol and Firearms have been called in to investigate.

For many organizers, this year's celebrations served as a run-through for the next New Year's Eve.

In Las Vegas, authorities say as many as 700,000 people will welcome in the new millennium on the Strip next December. Police used Thursday night to gauge how well they might be able to control next year's crowd.

"We're expecting next year to be very large," said Steve Meriwether, a Las Vegas police spokesman.

Organizers of the Times Square bash tested some of the special effects planned for next time.

"We only get one chance to try this out live," said Jeffrey Strauss, president of Countdown Entertainment, a marketing company that represents the ball and the building on which it sits.

South of the square, the Coney Island Arctic Ice Bears celebrated the New Year with their traditional dip in the Hudson River.

"It's very healthy," said Michael Polishchuk, 57, a club member who plunged into the chilly water. "After, you feel like a newborn baby, the skin becomes pink, it's very good for the blood."