Historyspan

Picture of A crowd of people watching Fela Kuti as he feeds his pet donkey Yakubu, which he named after General Yakubu Gowon the head of state at the time, 1975.

The island nation of Kiribati in the central Pacific is the first place on Earth to celebrate the New Year each year, as it sits just west of the International Date Line. On the flip side, American Samoa is among the last places to ring in the new year.