12 ms·
The Doomed Cleveland Balloonfest of 1986 [video]
- nanis 8y agoThere was no circumstance in which this could have gone "right".
- mikestew 8y ago"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0742671/quotes https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0742671/quotes
- ianbertolacci 8y agoI almost forgot, fellow babies..."Booger!"
- rwmj 8y agoNot sure I'd want to fly a helicopter near that.
- ca98am79 8y agoyes! Big Chuck and Little John: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Chuck_and_Lil%27_John https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Chuck_and_Lil%27_John I grew up in Akron in the 80s and loved watching them
- HillaryBriss 8y ago> most of the balloons ended up in Canada in these tense times, Prime Minister Trudeau should look back with an open heart to the days when a great American city gave the Canadian people thousands of free children's toys.
- crooked-v 8y agoMore like "hundreds of thousands of free choking hazards".
- HillaryBriss 8y agotrying to figure out the downvotes here. was it the Cleveland thing? do people not think Cleveland is a great city?
- woah 8y agoIt’s a very silly comment on a very serious forum
- DoreenMichele 8y agoJokes are mostly not welcome here. It's possible to make a humorous remark that gets upvoted (or ignored), but the element of politics in this specific remark doesn't help. Politics is also mostly not welcome here and political humor is nigh impossible to do without being offensive to somebody.
- brightball 8y agoFunny to see this on here. I believe Clemson and UGA actually started this trend. In 1983 Clemson announced it was going to set the record with a release of 250,000 balloons. Georgia, being competitive announced that the next week it would release 300,000. Both releases happened and after Georgia's attempt to steal the record, Clemson released official numbers that were about 360,000, allowing them to hold the balloon release record and making UGA's attempt to 1-up the release a wasted effort. Clemson and UGA was a big football rivalry at this point with both schools having won titles in 1981 and 1980 respectively, while being located only 90 miles apart. Shortly afterward, Disney decided to take the record with a launch of 1 million balloons which I believe preceded this Cleveland event. EDIT: Yep, Disney in 1985 release 1 million. https://www.ocregister.com/2015/12/02/mr-anaheim-remembering-a-high-flying-anniversary-at-disneyland/ https://www.ocregister.com/2015/12/02/mr-anaheim-remembering...
- RavingGoat 8y agoI was at that Clemson game. It was unreal.
- newman8r 8y agohere's a video of the Disney event in 1985 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8QCrvDt7yE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8QCrvDt7yE
- cf498 8y ago>"No one is quite sure where they went, but at least they are no longer posing a threat to fish and wildlife and they are not littering the lake" Victory for Cleveland!
- oicu812 8y agoMore information is in this article from the 25th anniversary of the Balloonfest: http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/09/twenty-five_years_ago_thousand.html http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/09/twenty-five_years_ag...
- mnctvanj 8y agoThe thing that strikes me is how deep the pathos about Cleveland runs as the newscasters hype the event ("Cleveland is no longer the mistake by the lake!" as the balloons fly). And that everyone seemed so entirely sure that dumping a million balloons into the sky would somehow make everyone stop laughing at the city. And then of course they all landed in the lake anyway.
- brian-armstrong 8y agoI think the Onion did a good job of capturing that here https://www.theonion.com/cleveland-finishes-construction-on-new-elevated-sewer-s-1823332951 https://www.theonion.com/cleveland-finishes-construction-on-...
- taurath 8y agoThe "newscasters" are Big Chuck and Little John which were a local TV comedy duo (similar to Almost Live! in Seattle). Its probably one of the more Cleveland things to happen in Cleveland though. Random aside - local shows like that are pretty sorely missing now.
- selimthegrim 8y agoMan, I miss those guys almost as much as Ghoulardi.
- PKop 8y agoHASTILY MADE CLEVELAND TOURISM VIDEO[0] Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video: 2nd Attempt[1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysmLA5TqbIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysmLA5TqbIY [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM
- kzrdude 8y agoNowadays, I can't look at any helium balloon release and not think it's littering. “Pretty” and out of sight, but still littering. You're throwing plastic into the nature and environment.
- voxadam 8y agoNot to mention the waste of an important non-renewable resource.
- Sargos 8y agoThe helium used in balloons isn't actually useful for much of anything.
- basementcat 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Applications
- cma 8y ago> You're throwing plastic into the nature and environment. It's usually latex. Still littering, but it degrades into mush pretty quick. If you go into the woods almost anywhere near a city though, you will see mylar balloons in the trees.
- newnewpdro 8y agoThis was grossly negligent on so many levels, I find it hard to believe that was televised live with enthusiasm just 32 years ago.
- debt 8y agoUnrelated: I recently found out The Atlantic is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/emerson-collective-atlantic-coalition/535215/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/emerson...
- russh 8y agoI didn't even know a person could own an entire ocean. I should get off the internet and start working on that first billion.
- n1vz3r 8y agoAfter this video, I finally got the joke involving Great Ohio Desert (artificial desert that was intended to be landmark of Ohio) from Wallace's 1987 "Broom of The System". Maybe it even inspired his idea with catapulting trash to Canada in his "Inifinte Jest".
- dgritsko 8y agoSemi-related - the YouTube clip in the article was linked to on a little subreddit called "Obscure Media", https://www.reddit.com/r/ObscureMedia/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ObscureMedia/ A wide variety of stuff shows up there, some of which might be interesting to the HN crowd.
- PKop 8y agoMade me think of the doomed "10 cent beer night", another Cleveland event that suffered from unintended consequences: https://youtu.be/CFtR38Mlscc https://youtu.be/CFtR38Mlscc
- justin66 8y agoThat one is commemorated on a t-shirt I've seen locally.
- bitmapbrother 8y agoI wasn't aware of this. So they launched 1.5 million balloons to set a Guinness World Record only to have Guinness not recognize the record and have 60% of the balloons fall into the river and eventually make their way to Canada. Crazy times back then.
- HillaryBriss 8y agoif this had happened today the president would have announced a 50% tariff on the Guiness Book of Records
- perpetualcrayon 8y agoHere's another fun idea gone horribly wrong courtesy of Cleveland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohvjLTZnH48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohvjLTZnH48
- Rjevski 8y agoDon’t have the time to watch it now, could anyone quickly summarise in text form? Thanks!
- positr0n 8y ago10 cent beer night at the ballgame. 8 innings of increasing shenanigans and then a riot broke out in the 9th inning. The refs called a forfeit and the Cleveland SWAT team had to be called.
- basicplus2 8y agoShould be renamed to litterfest
- gitgud 8y agoI wonder if this contributed to the "Don't Litter" movement in American culture. It looks like a lot of people had no concern for the aftermath or the environment. In hindsight it seems people didn't think about the future as much... maybe this changed that.
- chris_wot 8y agoThe weight of each uninflated plastic balloon is apparently 2.5g. That's 3.75 tonnes of plastic they released into the environment.
- pcunite 8y agoYouTube direct link: https://youtu.be/n0CT8zrw6lw https://youtu.be/n0CT8zrw6lw