38 New Year’s drone and fireworks moments that would make a Victorian child think they’re in a scarlet fever dream

Etai Eshet • Editor

Jan 3, 2025 1:00 PM EST

Every year, the world welcomes the New Year with jaw-dropping displays of lights, colors, and ingenious choreography, and honestly, it just keeps getting more unbelievable. and every time a video of elaborate light shows, visuals, and more recently, drone shows because viral online there's always that one comment: "Imagine showing this to a Victorian child."

Well, it's very nice to meet you all–I am the very child of whom thou dost speak, belonging to this age of Victoria.

Marvelously, a solitary contrivance—a program, they call it—orchestrates each delicate motion, dictating the course of every glowing creature so that the grand tableau doth remain unbroken, precise, and wondrous to behold. But pray, how is it so? How do they not collide in a tumble of chaos? Surely, one must reckon it a feat of human ingenuity bordering upon the miraculous!

The resplendent displays of celestial wonder—countless diminutive, luminous contrivances whirling and pirouetting in flawless harmony. These ingenious devices do fashion vast and mutable forms upon the canvas of the nocturnal heavens: great ticking clocks heralding the hour of midnight, words most curious, beasts of mythic lore, and patterns so intricate they might rival the finest embroidery. Each wee mechanism doth bear but a single point of light, yet together, they toil as a swarm of fantastical fireflies from some distant epoch to compose what one might aptly name art of the firmament.

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And fireworks, you say! Indeed, we have beheld their splendour in times past, yet now they are joined with melodious strains, radiant beams of light, and those astonishingly coordinated mechanical drones. Imagine, if you will, cascades of vivid hues erupting in the heavens, their brilliance throbbing and leaping in time to grand orchestral airs, or shaping themselves into the very likeness of great landmarks, suspended aloft as if by some enchantment.
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Verily, these masters of pyrotechny are no mere artisans, but wizards of flame and light, conducting explosions as though composing a symphony of the skies. The spectacle is so wondrously unreal, one might almost abandon the need for fabled wands, for here we behold a sorcery born of science and imagination alike!
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Seriously though. From Sydney to Dubai, London to Shanghai, drone and fireworks shows grow more elaborate, artistic, and frankly, mind-bending with each passing year. How do they even do this?!
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The world's largest firework launched over Nagasaki, Japan

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The world's largest firework launched over Nagasaki, Japan
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The world's largest firework launched over Nagasaki, Japan
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The world's largest firework launched over Nagasaki, Japan
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The world's largest firework launched over Nagasaki, Japan
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The world's largest firework launched over Nagasaki, Japan
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The world's largest firework launched over Nagasaki, Japan
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