Feature: 127th Tournament of Rose Parade held under tightened security on New Year's Day

With the joy on faces of hundreds of thousands of spectators, the 127th Rose Parade was held in Pasadena, California, Friday without a hitch under tightened security, sending New Year's greetings to the world on the first day of 2016.

A U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit aircraft flew over the parade route to start the New Year's Day parade Friday morning. The parade route began at the corner of Green Street and Orange Grove Boulevard, headed north on Orange Grove Boulevard before turning east onto Colorado Boulevard, where the majority of the parade viewing took place.

There were 44 floats, 19 equestrian groups and 19 marching bands in this year's rose parade, including a Chinese dragon float named "Marco Polo: East meets West."

Featuring a theme of "Find Your Adventure," the parade had Ken Burns, the five Emmy and two Grammy winning documentary filmmaker, as the grand marshal.

"It was a family tradition that we would get up on New Year's Day and the TV set would go on. I don't think I've ever missed one on television since the early 1960s," Burns said. "I've never been to the parade in person, so this will be a new adventure for me."

Burns was chosen to be the grand marshal because of his 2009 Public Broadcasting Service documentary series, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," which won outstanding nonfiction series and outstanding writing for nonfiction programming Emmys, according to the organizers of the tournament.

The Pasadena Tournament of Roses and National Park Service have formed an alliance in honor of the National Park Service's centennial in 2016, which prompted the parade's theme for the year.

"As proponents of the American spirit, we encourage people to find beauty in the landscape that builds the backdrop of their lives," Mike Matthiessen, the president of Pasadena Tournament of Roses, said in a greeting letter.

The Chinese dragon float named "Marco Polo: East meets West" in this year's parade, an annual event, was sponsored by a local Chinese company Singpoli Group. With the decoration of around 150,000 fresh flowers, "Marco Polo: East meets West" float won the Sweepstakes Award for most-beautiful entry.

"Our float uses spectacular symbols including an enormous dragon that highlights the similarities between western and Chinese cultures," said Singpoli CEO Xu Jian.

Friday's parade was held in the shadow of a terrorist attack less than a month ago that left 14 killed in San Bernardino, California. Pasadena officials tightened security and promised "increased visible and non-visible enhanced security measures" along the nine-kilometer parade route.

"Recent events at home and abroad have put added attention on the safety efforts at the annual Rose Parade and Rose Bowl game," said Pasadena Assistant City Manager Steve Mermell.

"We do have strong visible presence. There is plenty of security," said Pasadena Police Chief Phillip Sanchez Friday morning.

"We have state, federal and local officers all along the route. There are bomb-sniffing canines, rapid response teams and other less visible resources ready for anything," said Sanchez, who admitted there were "no known credible threats" to Pasadena or the parade. Endit