As Floridians counted down to the New Year, some folks on the other side of the world already rang in 2015.

Samoa and the Line Islands, in the Pacific, are among the first places on Earth to welcome the New Year. When the clock strikes midnight there (UTC+14), it's only 5 a.m. EST on the Florida Peninsula (UTC−5).

UTC stands for "Universal Time Coordinated," the world's current time standard said to be a more precise successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). At midnight UTC+0 on New Year's Eve, it is 6 p.m. on the Florida Peninsula.

Interestingly, 5 a.m. is also midnight in Hawaii (UTC−10), which is a full, 24-hour day behind Samoa and the Line Islands. Like many time zone lines, the International Date Line is not perfectly straight from north to south, and cuts eastward around the latter two islands.

As folks gather to say goodbye to a trying year, even festivities were not without tragedy.

Thirty-five people have been killed in a stampede during New Year's celebrations in downtown Shanghai, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

The report early Thursday cites the Shanghai government in saying that another 42 people were injured amid the chaos about a half-hour before midnight.

The deaths and injuries occurred at Shanghai's popular riverfront Bund area, which can be jammed with spectators for major events.

Last week, the English-language Shanghai Daily reported that the annual New Year's Eve countdown on the Bund that normally attracts about 300,000 people had been cancelled, apparently because of crowd control issues.

Here's a list of what time it is on the East Coast as other countries around the globe ring in the New Year

Cr. MyNews13