The Story of Balloonfest '86 | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
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- Опубликовано: 6 июл 2020
- "On the 27th of September 1986 more than a million helium-filled balloons were released from a public square in Cleveland, Ohio, as a fundraising publicity stunt..."
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Scared of balloons? You might be if you'd seen more than a million of them descending on you en masse from a clear blue sky. Stay safe out there, everyone!
Especially if they exploded with blood inside them like they do on "It"
Fascinating Horror That has to be the stupidest stunt, and very bad for the environment!
Your channel is very fascinating☺️
Why always so few photos? Not to mention videos. Is it about copyright?
@@samanthaslade5969 oh, no...
BALLOONS!!!
The true definition of "They were so preoccupied with whether they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should"
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should
Iyyyyy Jurassic Park
it was the fumes from all that leaded gas they still had back in the 80's.
Chaos!!!
Like mutating viruses in a lab.
You just know there was a lone scientist frantically trying to warn Cleveland officials that Balloon Fest 86 would end in disaster only to be dismissed and ignored.
Sounds like the making of a good thriller...!
Sergio, I imagine Eugene Levys character in Splash🧜♀️
*Scientist bursts into mayor's office*
Scientist (Out of Breath): Mr. Mayor, you have to call it off! Too many balloons. People are going to get hurt!
Mayor: Who the hell are you?
Mayor's Assistant: Sir, that's Dr. Stephen Helios, head of the balloonology department at Cleveland State.
Mayor: Get him out of here...
Dr Helios: You can't do this! You have to call it off! You sonofabitch! You've doomed us all!
always listen to your comrades
@@Teletex82 Dr. Helios. Lol 😃🎈
This honestly sounds like something The Joker would do.
Batman: "Trying to poison Gotham City again, Joker?"
Joker: "No, just profoundly irritate it. Fly my helium pretties!"
Lmao
It really does! Hahaha
2500 people are jokers too
How do you know it wasn't the Joker
This makes me think of the situation back in the 70’s when there was a beached whale and the city thought it would be a good idea to blow it up with dynamite. Chunks rained down for hundreds of yards
YOu can find that video easily. It always makes me laugh.
I can imagine that guy trying to explain to the insurance company how his brand new Ninety Eight got squashed by a hunk of falling whale???
Eeeeeeeeew! 😱
At least the whale was biodegradable.
Where was that?
It's amazing to me that they planned this for six months and no one went "Hey, maybe this is a dumb idea"
They were in too deep to go back.
I'm amazed that nobody who does glitter bombs or gender reveal spectacles ever thinks it through, either...
Someone probably did, but they were overruled by the loud and stupid majority.
"but .. but ... but ..It's for CHARITY! Here's an ides. Just take the money you'd spend on the pointless and wasteful 'publicity' effort and give it to the charity directly instead.
The more I learn about history the more I learn that that thought is the most rare
Well, luckily we learned and realized that this is a bad id...
"the record was broken less than a decade later by Disney"
OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE!
Dumb, is making the mistake. Stupid is repeating it. Moronic is doing it again but bigger
@@jmus6494 and yknow what they say about bad luck coming in 3s 🙈
Not surprising, considering how Disney butchered the Marvel comics for publicity through 'mcu'.
Given I can't find much on the Disney release, I'm going to assume that Disney actually thought things through and thus broke the record in a much safer way.
@@duchessofmelon9967 Eh, balloon releases are still a bad idea because of how bad they are for the environment. I doubt Disney had some way of preventing wild animals from mistaking the fallen balloons for food.
When I was in elementary school in the early-mid 80s, we did balloon launches with tags of our name and our school address. So much fun at the time, but so bad for the environment and privacy now. My tag was returned a year later by a guy who found it in the woods in another state.
@Simon Simon Right
I remember doing that in the 90's up to 2000, never occurred to me at the time to ask (I was about 8) what is going to happen to all these balloons when its over? Now I have trouble thinking about EVERY toothbrush, EVERY pair of worn out slippers, EVERY happy meal toy sitting in a land fill somewhere...effectively forever...
We did the same at our Elementary school in New Hampshire in the 1980s. Balloon Day was such a highlight. But I can’t imagine what an environmental disaster releasing hundreds of balloons into the environment. I never got my postcard back. I was bummed.
We did that when I was in grade school (also in the '80s) I never got any kind of response from mine. We were in a small town miles from the next small town, no big surprise. I remember asking the teacher "If we send all our balloons up at once, won't they all end up in the same place?" Lol, one of the teachers laughed at me and said he'd let mine loose slightly after the rest.
I did one in elementary in the late 90s in the UK. I was really hopeful mine would land in a jungle and be found by a tiger 😖
This was a big thing in the 80's. I remember this incident. I remember my school releasing balloons every year with messages tied to them with our names and the school's address. It was basically littering.
I remember my elementary school had us to the same thing as well. How stupid of these other organizations to do this in the first place but to also do it after watching the disaster that happened here in Cleveland.
Well, there's a big difference between releasing 100 balloons and 1.4 million.
@@ZachAttackIsBack you’re right, however it’s still harmful to the environment nonetheless
This is embarrassingly stupid. I can’t believe this was actually executed.
😬😬😬😬 we’re still embarrassed...we have to learn about it in our state history classes and usually science as well
I mean, are you surprised?
That’s Cleveland for you.
I was 2 years old when I asked the question "what happens when a balloon gets to the sky?" ....
Welcome to America. You'll find that our embarrassingly stupid events are second to none.😁
This is like some b-list super villian plot, from 50's era comics
This is Cleveland! To be fair, Superman was from Cleveland, too lol
"Nyah-ha-ha! Try as you might, Batman and Robin, but there's no defeating crime's Dynamic Duo -- Kite-Man and Mr. Polka-dot!"
Sadly, those are both actual Batman villains from way back in the day.
Didn’t the joker do this in the 1989 Batman Film
Lmfao - Balloons rained on the ohio country-side - clogging drains and causing car accidents 😂
I'm from Cleveland and remember this well.
Two of the worst storms I've ever seen in my life were that weekend -- one on Friday night, when Balloonfest organizers were afraid that the strong winds would rip off the covers holding the balloons (that storm is rarely mentioned, but it was BAD). The one that hit a couple hours after the launch was even stronger.
All in all, I think it was a success because I just checked the map, and Cleveland's on there.
You win!
Haha! You don't have too many thumbs up because your brand of humor is too good for them! I loved it! (I agree with the other poster: you win! 😄
Lmao that was a perfect dad joke
Lol 😂🗺📍
🤣🤣🤣 Dead!!
This has got to be THE MOST 80s thing I have ever heard of. The unnecessary extravagance of it all, the lack of forethought, the danger and ensuing disaster!! If that doesn't just scream 80s idk what does
LOL! IKR!
As a child of the 80s I hafta say you are embarrassingly correct, we chose Reagan and this crazy back to the 50s mindset, but without any sense of responsibility, events like this were common, it was all a big screw you to the environmental movement, I can't believe that 40 years later we are facing the same problems and half the country doesn't give a hoot
Okay, as an Ohioan born in the late seventies (Carter administration) Cleveland had already had a MAJOR gaffe when the cuyahoga river CAUGHT ON FIRE.
I think the impetus behind this was “we are more than burning hell rivers, we are FUN too!!!”
Those balloons...well, we have family in Cleveland and aren’t too far away in the Toledo area and let me assure you we found our chickens pecking on balloon rubber after this. I’ll never forget my grandmother picking the bits up and muttering under her breath that Cleveland was a “godforsaken hole”.
The news warned that we would be getting potential fragments and they weren’t kidding.
The planet is choked with plastic, it is making the whole world sick, can we please stop all this madness, why do we want so much? Why are we never satisfied?
Cleveland, the mistake by the lake that brought us a flaming river, a flaming mayor, a flaming idiot of a mayor, and of course the 10 cent beer night riot.
What baffles me is how anyone thought this was a good idea to start with. Did they forget that balloons pop and fall back down eventually? It’s not like they were gonna float away into outer space and disappear.
They don't pop, they deflate usually. They do come back down though. These just came back down early because of the rain. They probably figured they would stay up for days, disperse, and come down in the middle of the Atlantic or somewhere where it wouldn't be their problem. It's still a bad idea. Still compared to all the crap people throw out of their car windows, this is probably only 0.001% of the plastic dumped in the environment that day.
Bretton Ferguson they do often get high enough to pop from expansion due to lower air pressure.
My dumbass as a kid thought that balloons do eventually go up to space.
@@BrettonFerguson
Talk about missing the point..
No one thought a small piece of plastic, even thousands and thousands of them, was bad then. But I bet people will look back at the current glitter/slime trend, and Orbeez, in a couple decades and think it wasteful and environmentally dumb.
Promoter: "Ok, you know how people keep laughing about Cleveland setting their river on fire? Well I have this idea that will make people forget about!"
Sort of like punching yourself in the head so you forget about your sprained ankle.
I still think they should have renamed the baseball team the River Fires. Guardians is just dumb.
The amount of life-saving Helium wasted ... insane.
Thought exactly the same thing. Not just an insane amount of pollution, but senseless waste of precious resources. Just why?
Helium is one of the safest ways to sleep forever-
The pollution is just too hard to watch. I can't believe they were allowed to do this, who thought it was a good idea?
We did this as a kid at school to see how far the balloons would go. My name and the school address was inside the balloon. The hope was that someone finds it and writes back. Dumb I think mine went 5 miles away lol
Also such a waste of helium
@Elite Soulfly
😹
Capitalists
@@LCx829 Oh geez, you reminded me of that Penpal creepypasta, same thing happens but a pedo finds the protagonist's balloon and starts stalking him 😣
Even if this event had gone exactly as planned, the balloons would still descend eventually. Not all at once or in a single place, but almost a million and a half pieces of plastic would still end up littered in pastures, woods, and waterways.
Indeed.
Compared to all the crap people throw out of their car windows, this is probably only 0.001% of the plastic dumped in the environment that day.
@@BrettonFerguson Yet, this is adding to it, so it made a much bigger impact in the short term. Not claiming it isn't still making an impact.
Bretton Ferguson the majority of the pollution and litter is put out my companies, like Coca-Cola and starbucks, or any of the millions of the unheard of ones
Exactly, which is why I don't understand that Disney went ahead with the same stunt in the 90s, beating the record of number of balloons 🤔
Wouldn’t the possibility that these could float into a plane’s engine (like birds do sometimes) be another reason not to do this?
naw I cant imagine a balloon causing any issue for a jet turbine. props or helicopters maybe because if it got caught on the blades vs chopped it could cause balance issues.
Plane engines actually get tested on how they respond to objects being sucked into them. They are typically designed that something the size and weight of a decent sized bird will not cause catastrophic damage.
RIP to the two lost fishermen. Thanks for the well done vid FH.
I can't imagine how many of those balloons are in the ocean or on trash island still.
Aye !!
That's what I was thinking too.
Not worth it don't ya think
i immadiatly tough this
I mean, if you still use/buy balloons, you are also contributing to it
Sure put Cleveland on the map alright...for the dumbest event ever
Haven't heard of 10ct beer night have you? Balloonfest is 2nd at most for dumbest event in Cleveland.
I think it was already on the map for the Cuyahoga River catching on fire 🔥
And that’s on being the “mistake on the lake”
Kinky can in Corona Also our lake had a massive algae bloom a few years back which rendered all water for showering and drinking unsafe and boiling it made it even worse and more toxic. I was in college in Toledo when it happened and we had no water for over a week.
Cleveland area (Westlake) is also on the map for being home to the infamous Paul brothers, sadly.
I've had this distrust towards balloons for a long time; Stemmed from 2 different incidents at different points in my childhood, where a balloon popped, and the rubbery-shreds got in my eyes. Didn't cause any damage, and never obstructed my vision, but howdy was it painful just getting my eyes cleaned out.
This whole mess would've probably given me full-on phobia of Balloons, had I been alive back then in '86.
For some reason I'm reminded of the WKRP episode "Turkeys Away"
Yes!
Funniest moment on TV in my pantheon anyway. However I believe that bit was actually inspired by another, even dumber event that happened in that same Public Square. Ted Stepien, the owner of the Cleveland Caveliers as well as a womens professional softball team tired to promote the latter by having some of his players stand at the foot of that tall pointed tower to catch softballs he would drop from somewhere near the top. He did not know he was supposed to give them only the slightest nudge away from the building just so they wouldn't hit the sides. Instead he gave them a strong throw outward and before you knew it softballs at terminal velocity were falling into the observing crowd causing injuries.
Imagine how much this stunt would cost now, due to..... INFLATION 😏
Tehehehe 🤭
Nice 😏
🤣🎈
ROTFLOL
ty isn’t it crazy how “bad” jokes can make you feel so much better lol
Yeah my uncle cleaned up ballons in his yard for months.
@Jonny Burrito balloon a day my guy. Best way to clean
😂😂😂😂
@Jonny Burrito the balloons probably all fell in the area around OP's uncle's place and would then get blown by the wind into the yard, this could definitely go on for months
@@justacouplapaninis4986 oh I did not think of that! How annoying that would be.
Yeah okay
Imagine struggling to stay afloat in the water with your fellow fisherman friend only to see a massive hoard of balloons blanket the entire surrounding waters... Thats gotta suck. Rest in peace to those two I mean no disrespect to them it just seems like a surreal thing to see
Must have thought God was taking the piss
I remember balloon fest. It was on the news during the fest and later for the mess and hazards. It was amazing and then later, embarrassing. Way back in the 80s where all I was afraid of was big foot and killer bees.
I was not afraid of bigfoot. Once when I was a kid, we were on the road, passing by a little town, going on a camping trip.
A National Guard guy stopped us from going into town because he said there had just been a bigfoot sighting and no one was allowed i. My dad was a cop, and I begged him to show his badge and get us in. He would not. All the rest of the trip I scoured the woods with my eyes, looking for bigfoot. lol This was in Missouri.
"Would put Cleveland on the map"
You are already on the map because your river caught fire from pollution...14 times!!
Their river is so polluted all their fish have aids
@@brandyn.r.sanders6130
The river is closed due to balloons
And aids
Pool's closed
And even before that happened Cleveland was literally already on maps ... everywhere.
Cleveland is like a mean stepbrother no one likes but they have to endure.
This was the 80s, there was no global warming, only cocaine.
And heroin
interestingly enough I think there was a warm period between medieval times and the insustrial era.
Temperatures were far higher in the Viking age than they are now. The sea level was much higher up. We can see this from many ancient viking coastal settlements nowadays located in the hills and countryside of Scandinavia. Global warming is real but we humans do not cause it nor will it ruin our lives. It is a politicized hoax meant to push wealth and power into the governments and the billionaires. The earth and all it's life would simply adapt if the earth got warmer, nothing would really change all that much.
@@christianriddler5063 if you sincerely think that human activity has not contributed to global temperatures/pollution, I strongly encourage you to examine the multiple studies done regarding climate change since the industrial revolution. Although I will concede that there is some truth to the fact that the earth goes through periods of warming and cooling, if you come from a scientific background then you will know that there is no POSSIBLE way for human activity to not have an effect on global temperatures.
@@banquo4223 Pollution sure, but temperature? No, there is no evidence to prove that we humans substantially altered the temperature of the earth with any form of industry. Pollution is a big problem though and destroys ecosystems that are vital to our food production as well as nature itself.
You know, out of all the engineering kerfuffles on this channel, I think this one had perhaps the most innocent of intentions but not enough foresight to understand why this was a bad idea.
“It was hoped the event would put Cleveland on the map”
I’m fairly sure that Cleveland was readily apparent on most maps of Ohio at that point.
I was there! My dad took me downtown to see it. We parked in his works parking lot a few blocks away. When it kinda flopped lol we spent the afternoon driving around looking for and collecting baloons. I came home with a car full of them And had them covering my bedroom ceiling for about 5days. Never realized all the problems it caused until years later when I heard about it . Still one of my favorite memories and days I spent with just me and my dad
Actually a really good comment about love and unity. Thanks for sharing.
@@user-ru6mq5sc5n yes I get why people today are so upset about the environment but that was not a thing back then so all I have is a wonderful fun memory with my dad ❤
Please never lose that sense of wonder and thank you for sharing this memory
@Jack Yes....? Lol
awesome memories:)
imagine being one of the volunteers and it slowly sinking in that you just spent hours blowing up balloons and the only payoff was widespread disaster
And nobody wore their free volunteer t-shirt.
This was the very first video I watched from you, and the one that made me subscribe.
Thank you for always bringing events in history back to the light, so the lessons are never forgotten.
my buddys father made a pile of money off this back then. he was a helium supplier.
I love how people only think about how cool an event could be, but never about the aftermath..
@Milly May probably sarcasm
@Milly May most likely sarcasm
@Milly May definitely sarcasm
@Milly May *is sarcasm*
@Milly May _sarcasm_
Balloon releases in general are a bad idea. You don't know where they'll end up: the stomach of an animal, a power transformer, etc. The one that makes me die the most inside is when a group of idiots release a thing of balloons in a restaurant plaza surrounded by power lines... only for the balloons to hit said power lines and blow out power for the entire area. Smart move there...
Some women in Germany released these sky lanterns, you know those made of light paper material getting their drive by a small flame source. They flew into a zoo, onto a building that housed apes which engulfed in flames. About 50 animals were burnt alive, only two survived. Heartbreaking. They are illegal for a reason- you never know where they will end up and what they will set on fire.
I live on the coastline and would be infuriated if I saw someone do this. We're taught at a young age to never release balloons since they could end up in the ocean and sea turtles often mistake mistake the floating rubber as food.
Like you said: "you dont know where they'll end up."
I'm surprised some people haven't got this memo...or don't care and still do this.
What drives me nuts is people who do balloon releases in memory of a deceased loved ones. No, those balloons don't go to heaven. They rise a little bit, then come back down. Animals can get tangled up in the string. Mylar balloons are made of plastic, and may end up in waterways, where animals will mistake it for food. Plus it adds to the microplastic problem. Wow, what a great idea. Kill a bunch of wildlife to celebrate your dead relative. For feelz.
Latex balloons won't bother power lines. Mylar ones, on the other hand, can create a short circuit between wires.
@@hamsterama Or "gender reveals." I don't know who started that trend but damn, use your brain! People and animals both die because of those stupid parties! They actually, literally have blown people up. "Hey guys, watch this" gone bad.
I was fairly young then, and didn't pay much attention to national trends and incidents, but I think balloon-releases (on a far smaller scale) were popular before the '86 disaster. My elementary school in L.A. did this in '83 or '84. Students wrote wishes for peace or goodwill or something similar either on the balloons themselves, or on slips of paper that were inserted into the balloons before they were filled with helium. We then released about 300(?) balloons and stared up in awe at the colorful sight. If our school did this, then others must have done as well. I now consider this a form of unnecessary pollution, and someone has to clean up the mess.
I went there with my girlfriend but missed it. The basement of that tall neoclassical tower is the terminal for the city rail transport (called, oddly enough, Terminal Tower) which was how we got there. Between trying to fight the crowd to get out of the building and the early launch we missed the release by 10 minutes. This event was a kinda dumb you-didn't=really-have-to-do-it event, but if you ever feel like visiting a larger horror that happened in Cleveland, check out the 1944 Cleveland East Ohio Gas Company explosion. One square mile of city neighborhoods wiped out by blast and fire and 130 fatalities. It's almost forgotten, even here. I think it's because it happened during WW2 when whole cities were burning and being blasted to ruin regularly all over the world. My grandparents lived on the edge of the fire area with my mom and aunt. The backyard trees caught fire but their house was spared. They saved a lot of newspapers with reports on the tragedy which I devoured as a teenager.
They should also get the Guinness of "most accidents caused by a single event" award too.
Why would you assume they won that record after seeing the other videos on this channel?
This was legit the stupidest thing ever. “Let’s release a bunch of rubber into the sky and let it litter the already polluted Cleveland area”
😆😆
Y’all act like you’ve ever been to cleveland 🙄 it’s not a shithole here.
@@rachelkat sure it's not lol keep telling yourself that 😂😂😂
The factory of sadness
Rachel Kat I’ve lived in Columbus my whole life. That’s 31 years. I’ve been to Cleveland multiple multiple times. The cuyahoga river caught fire. More than once. Cleveland is one of the most polluted cities in the country
This is why I taught my children to think before they act:
To every action there is a reaction.
There are consequences to those actions.
A good action can bear good consequences
A bad action can bring bad consequences .
Simple. But true.
This is a bit simplistic. Good actions can sometimes have bad consequences. Bad actions can have good consequences. Isn't the road to hell paved with good intentions?
@@gary9346 that is why I said good actions CAN bear good consequences. The point was to stop and think before you do something, about what effect it may have on yourself, and others around you. It would seem since they are grown, that I did a pretty decent job. They have told me numerous times how much they love me for always teaching them right from wrong and about consequences to their actions. Something I believe many adults really don’t have much of anymore!
I always wanted to see the whole story on this.
Thank you!!!!
"...backed by the city of Cleveland, who were keen for some good publicity." How's that going for you, Cleveland?
Well, it DID put them on the map, just like they wanted.
"Our economy is based on Lebron James"
I'm a 58 year old life long Clevelander and I never heard of this event. Not before, during or after. Have you ever been to Cleveland, asshole?
You probably live in the worst city in America, Pittsburgh.
@@headley62 I lived in Cleveland most of my life and moved out years ago. It's just another big, noisy, messy, crime ridden city whose industrial heyday is long gone and will never return. It's probably even worse now than it was in 2004, when I left. There are a few things that I miss about it: the West Side Market, the Metroparks Zoo, the Emerald Necklace, Parmatown Mall, the old architecture of the downtown area, and the wide variety of cuisines. But I would never move back.
@@ElveeKaye The Cuyahoga River Has Caught Fire for 14th Time in 1969(which "spawned" the Clean Water Act, the EPA and Earth Day.(April 22, 1970) and then again in 2020. EPA has been sleeping on the job, I guess.
www.outsideonline.com/2416503/cuyahoga-river-fire-2020-1969
The most moronic idea I’ve ever seen. Just ridiculous.
Anyone who's had a balloon fight in their own yard know what a mess they make in very small numbers. This was insane.
Wtf is a balloon fight?
A balloon fight?? You ran with some rough kids!
I remember when this happened, it seemed to disappear from the public realm as I didn't hear more about it in CO.
Imagine just getting up to tend to your crops, looking out the windows and seeing your field COVERED in balloons
“Hey Elroy, what did we plant in the west field again?”
"Prank em John"
“I don’t remember growing confetti…”
humans waking up: "how can we ruin the earth today boys?"
This was only Cleveland.
@@declamatory This is humanity. Name any country or major city in the world and I'll find 10 ways in which the people there have damaged the environment.
@@esquiredan2702 - Start with non-White Africans, and start heading East through India and into the Orient. 90% of the plastic in the oceans come from that part of the world. Those things don't give a shit about the environment.
@@declamatory Yeah, case in point. We as a species are kind of the worst thing that ever happened to the planet. Even if the US went 100% renewable tomorrow and reduced our carbon footprint to 0, it would only help so much...
@@esquiredan2702 - We are not all "one species"! That is a ridiculous, programmed assertion!
"hey you guys thought about the wind?"
"nah it'll be fine"
This happened a year before I was born and I had no idea this happened. Thank you for sharing this.
*does a line of coke* listen listen it’s gonna put us on THE MAP
*SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTT*
Ahh 1986...
The year they
1. thought they could solve poverty by making a human chain of people
2. decided launching a teacher into the stratosphere with millions of traumatized children watching was a good idea
3. thought releasing thousands of balloons to rejuvenate a city who’s reputation had been damaged by the already polluted lake by further polluting it.
4. Made a serious breach of protocol during a test leading to the worst nuclear accident in human history
Good times!!!
Cocaine is a hell of a drug
touma hi! I’m referring to the challenger explosion where they attempted to launch a teacher, Christa Macalluf, into space on the shuttle. And I’m sure as you probably know it exploded 😕
Kissa Rococo 😂
Don’t forget the series of terrible ideas that resulted in Chernobyl! 1986 almost rivals 2020 in the shitty year olympics.
Actually they launched her into the ocean.
Just shows that no matter how ineffective you may be singularly, a zerg rush will ALWAYS do some damage.
I remember this. Who knew we would make it onto Fascinating Horror one day?
Disney: "Its been done and was disastrous for an entire city... so lets do it AGAIN!!" 🤔
Disney: "It was done and horribly failed. But WE can make it work. After all, that was Cleveland, but we're DISNEY!"
@sct913 I read this in my head with the most upbeat Mickey voice I could think of 😂
@@destree6348 Whatta say Mousketeers. Can we do it?
@sct913 I am a child of the 80's, so heck yeah!! I am of the Spears and Timberlake era lol
@@sct913 I mean, worth noting, a major element of why this was such a disaster was the weather. Good luck getting that sort of rain and cold in Florida, especially if you do it in the summer.
"Hey, I'm bored. Want to release 1.4 MILLION BAGS OF RUBBER INTO THE SKY?"
I think it might have been rubber,but still a bad idea
@@essencetoney933 You're correct. I was just.. checking to see if you were awake.
Smh lol
Hey me too! Fucc yes Robin I DO! I can always count on you to come up with SOMETHING!! 👍 I'll be outside!
It was gonna be 2 million. Who the hell sees a storm coming and thinks the logical thing to do is hurry up and release the balloons BEFORE the storm hits?
Imagine all of the animals that died because of this brainstorm. I wonder if people ever think of consequences.
Cleveland didn't need a balloon fest to put it on the map, it has always been known as the mistake by the lake.
And to think, now there's a helium shortage...
Gotta love the 80's.
There's still the same amount of helium!
@@declamatory shut up
My understanding, which could be wrong, is that the only reason the helium shortage is a major problem is because some morons back in the eighties convinced the U.S. Congress that the country's Strategic Helium Reserve, originally created decades before when it was still believed that helium airships were the future, was worthless and should be gotten rid of. Military advisors tried to explain to congress that helium has other important uses, but they wouldn't listen and have been stupidly selling off what should have been multiple trillions of dollars worth of helium for a few hundred million.
I love how they released the balloons because of an oncoming storm without thinking about how the storm would cause the balloons to move in an unexpected way
I remember this when I was a kid. I had no idea how disastrous it was until recently!
Love this channel bro.
I went on a walk on Lake Michigan’s beach at the beginning of October. It was a beautiful day, the water was clear and the sand was warm. But I kept coming across balloons and balloon strings that had washed ashore. I picked up as many as I could hold, and threw them away once I reached the lighthouse because I didn’t want the poor birds to get after them and die. I swore to never buy a balloon again, because it was awful to see.
Really !! XD
X to doubt
@@yvick7770 Nah, I believe in op. I live in a coastline city and I've seen things like that in beaches myself
You're a hero... 🤣🤣
No you didn't. Never happened. You're a liar. Fact.
Wait a moment! The record was broken by Disney in 1994 and you gloss that over? I'd like details about what they did better.
I was curious too, so did a little research to see if Disney's event was any different in terms of safety. I'll keep updating this comment if I find more.
www.watermark-events.com/disneyballoon.html
"There are two types of balloons in general use - latex and mylar.
Although latex balloons are considered bio-degradable, this will take anywhere from 6 months to 4 years to decompose and they can wreak a lot of havoc before they do.
In one experiment researchers observed that balloons floating in seawater deteriorated much slower, and even after 12 months, still retained their elasticity." -encenter.org/visit-us/programs/birthday-parties/balloons/
Despite it being labelled as the largest release of balloons ever by Disney, not much articles can be found talking about it.
Most of the articles I've found was of the 1985 balloon release by Disney, consisting of 1.2million balloons. The 1994 one was 1.59 million.
@@dindonpoo163 There's a video on youtube with the most info I could find, here: ruclips.net/video/UfMLvtaTgtA/видео.html (a promo video from the time, made by the company that supplied the helium). I like how their fun facts include that 6000 sticking plasters were needed for all the blisters volunteers were getting from tying the balloons! Apparently the six pods they held the balloons in somehow allowed them to account for various wind directions. The balloons themselves were biodegradable and hand tied; but as you mention, the latex can still take a long time to decompose. Apparently they "consulted and received approval from major environmental organisations" and "95% of balloons rose to 28,000 feet where they became brittle in the cold air and shattered into tiny pieces". One wonders how much of that is actually true... And how many of the remaining 5% of 1.7 million (a mere 85,000 balloons!) caused problems for British wildlife.
@@dindonpoo163 Disney and other corporations literally pay people money to make sure nothing is ever in the news or heard about
They let the millions of pieces of plastic deflate before littering the world, thus creating an equally terroristic result but one not quite as noticeable because the pieces were small and well dispersed by the time they came back down. I cannot believe we let people get away with this shit.
Releasing that much plastic into the air to drop in random locations is a disaster regardless.
The intensity of panic, anger and anxiety the families of the drowned men must of experienced!!!!!!!! They must have screamed at everyone involved until they lost their voices.
Scientists: “What goes up must come down!”
Cleveland: “Sounds fake.”🥴
Pmsl nice one👍
Libtard lies.
@@abelq8008 Can we NOT politicize this, and actually use real words.
Cleveland must have been republicants then, cause they are incredibly dumb and think everything is "fake" and a "hoax" just because they said so or because their favorite politician says so (🐑 sheeple). They don't give a crap about life (climate, nature, animals, people). Aka some of the most anti-life people on this planet.
They even whine about paper straws and bags lol 🤦🏻♂️
It will just disappear off the edge of the flat earth.
So no one not a single person voiced any doubt about this? Did no one go "Hey this might not be such a good idea." Honestly human stupidity just astounds me sometimes.
Autumn Garcia one scientist did but no one listened to him :(
people are weird like that. I work in sled dog racing. Its so obviously abusive. I can pull data and articles all day from reputable animal welfare organizations. But noooo! These dogs just love to run! Im an extremist and a party pooper for bringing up nuance and being like "hey, this racing stuff is pretty messed up"
Show someone a video of a seal with a balloon string cutting into its neck. Sounds extreme and like an out of the ordinary event. Out of sight, out of mind. Its just a few balloons? Whats the big deal? lol
people don't use reason when it involved emotional pursuits
@@doggodoggo3000 wtf that is still a thing? Where does this happen?
As an 80/90s child I was forced to release a balloon with my school information on it. I cried and cried because I was afraid for the birds. I was young. My thought process didn't go deeper than birds are in the air and trees so they are in danger. Plus, I had been gifted a national geographic book that had a picture of a bird with a 6 pack can ring stuck around its neck which really upset me and put the danger in my mind so young. My uncle lied to me and said someone found my balloon and disposed of it properly so that I would finally calm down about it. I didn't learn the truth until my 20's. If my 5/6 year old self understood the dangers, all those adults involved in planning this should have understood.
Love revisiting this short masterpiece and hearing of reckless fools apprehended ;-)
This is one of the things I became ENGROSSED in during covid.
I was obsessed with this.
That's my hometown.
The lake that's erie.
The tower that's terminal.
The river that caught on fire......
I think you should move
10 cent beer night..
Cuyahoga!
"Here's our river that catches on fire, it's so polluted that all our fish have AIDS"
@@SWpurgatory "At we're not Detroit...we're not Detroit!"
99 Luftballons was released 2 years before this event; how could ANYONE have thought this was a good idea?
Now THAT was a cool tune.
Both English and German!🙃
“99 dead baboons,
Swinging from a banana tree”
Well, to be fair, only releasing 99 red balloons would not have caused as big an issue as 1.4 million balloons. :P
worst song ever
I like how even without the bad conditions this would have been garbage (literally) for the city. Balloons would be littered EVERYWHERE and fill waterways; they'd take forever to clean up, and I'm positive the city had no intention of setting up any sort of cleaning process either.
It DID put Cleveland on the map. "See that city on the map? That's the Mistake-by-the-Lake!"
Imagine all the animals that died because of these balloons. Balloon releases should be illegal.
how??? also this was the 80s there was no global warning only cocaine 💀💀💀
@@plant5875 nigga this caused the global warming 💀
@@perxcl6185 wow you're so cool 😒
@@perxcl6185 We got a badass over here.
Who the hell cares?
People with common sense: how could they not see this would go terribly
Walt Disney: BIGGER! BETTER!
Leave Walter outta this 😭💀
Walt had nothing to do with it as he died in 66. Wtf are you on about?
Everything bad about the Disney company is post-Walt.
Lol he's dead
That's one hell of a clean up. Some people just have too much time on their hands to think of crap like this.
“I used to think my life was a tragedy, now i know its a comedy.”
I had never heard of this and I have family who live in Cleveland. Wow! Balloons are so bad for our sea animals.
"sea animals" You mean the goldfish people dumped in the rivers and lake Erie that are now 3 feet long? Does anything else still live in the water in Cleveland? I heard the river caught fire. Yeah I just looked it up, 1969 the Cuyahoga River Fire, aka Cleveland River Fire. think about that, the river was so toxic it caught fire. Normally you could use a river to put out a fire. Those balloons are the only thing swimming in that river. Well the balloons and the giant mutant goldfish.
@@BrettonFerguson Waterways connect to one another.
i live here and i had never heard of this event until now
who needs sea animals anyway? whales are disgusting
@@BrettonFerguson the factories were all closed by the 1980s and off-shored to China. Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga river are the cleanest bodies of water now. Chicago and the Hudson river are toxic and flammable sludge.
The first thing I thought when he said a million balloons was, "that's not good for the environment" and look at that, it isn't.
It’s not that bad. There is big body of water next to the city and balloons eventually burst and sink to the bottom. There is room for some balloons in the nature and back in the days it wasn’t a problem. If there was some nuisance few days after the event I think it was easily worth the fun. They should definitely do this again in a bigger scale.
@@lottnio8207 You mother never told you your I.Q., did she...
At least someone learnt from their mistake, but still, the amount of latex that would have ended up in most likely the oceans is astonishing
In which Cleaveland reminds us why they were called the Mistake on the Lake.
I was a 14 year old in California when this took place. I remember it being all over the news at the time. It was so beautiful, yet so poorly thought out. Definitely something I remember from my youth. Great video!
Great pix! Thank you!
Reminds me of that time you and me in a little toy shop bought a bag of balloons with the money we got. Set them free at the break of dawn, til one by one they were gone.
Of course Disney saw this disaster and said “let’s do it again!”
"As god is my witnesses, I thought turkeys could fly."
Quote from WKRP in Cincinnati's station manager, Mr. Carlson.
"The humanity"
I remember that episode! Lol
and one of the funniest things you will ever see.......
ruclips.net/video/BGFtV6-ALoQ/видео.html
As I saw this I remembered WKRP
@rapheALtoid Wild turkeys can fly. The domesticated ones, not so much. Used to work for Foster Farms. The domesticated turkey is one of the dumbest creatures on this planet. Longest flight I've ever seen by a domesticated turkey was about three feet. And he landed face first.
Really takes “not thinking though your cunning plan” to a new level
It's funny how they only thought about releasing the balloons but didn't stop to think how to bring them down.
Only in Cleveland, the city that set it's river on fire...
Well, they didn't set it on fire so much as it was so polluted and caught fire. Too much petroleum in the river! It actually caught fire twice. Once in the 50's and then again in the 1969.
lol just like in that parody travel ad.
@@angiearbogast5424 Many more times, actuially. Oner a dozen. IIRC. Not the only city with river fires, just the most publicity.
A bunch of marine biologists on the east coast warned them ahead of time. Cleveland mayor was stupid
Awesome story!
I remember we did a “Balloon Launch” at around this time in 2nd grade in our school. It may have even been the same day for all I know. I think I now know why “balloon releases” seemed to abruptly stop after that year. 🤭
The amount of stupidity it took to come up with this event is amazing. Disney was so impressed they had to prove they were even dumber.
White :
Is Dumb and Dumber a Disney movie ?
I already know this whole story, but his tone of voice makes me FEEL like it’s going to culminate in the coming of Lucifer.
🤣
He's already here, I'm smoking crack with him
I know right? The narrator is really good at creating that feeling of escalating dread.
"Put Cleveland on the map..." People in the surrounding states think that Cleveland's a joke to begin with..
Balloon Fest organizer: "Here, hold my beer."