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Short Stuff: Balloonfest · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Chuck and this is short stuff and one I'm excited
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: about because I've been wanting to do this one for
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a very long time. Chuck. Yeah, I kind of remember
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: this a little bit, do you a little bit? It's
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: just it definitely when I was researching it, I was like,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I think I remember just like walking through the living
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: room when the news was on and hearing about this
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: when I was whatever, like fifteen. It's so sad to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: to to think about that this happened the way that
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: it did, because what are we talking about. We're talking
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: about something called balloon Fest eighties six And it was
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: a uh publicity stunt UH initiated by the United Way
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: of Cleveland to basically rehabilitate Cleveland's image. UM, because back
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: in the eighties and earlier, Cleveland did not have a
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: very good image. Apparently it was referred to as the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: mistake on the Lake like erie um. The Coyahoga River
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: that flows through it had caught fire very famously in
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: the sixties, UM, and it just didn't have a super
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: good reputation. So Cleveland said, you know what we're gonna
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: We're gonna put ourselves on the map, and we're gonna
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: do that, um by releasing the largest number of balloons
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: anyone's ever released, and we're gonna set the world record
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: in this beautiful display of millions of balloons just floating
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: up into the sky over Cleveland, and it's going to
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: be a new moment of rebirth for this city. And
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: the thing is it didn't really go according to plan
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: and kind of back yeah, I mean, first of all,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: this just is such an eighties thing, right, yeah, oh yeah, totally.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: It feels just like a balloon release like this could
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: have only happened between n Yeah, yeah, I think you
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: might be onto something there, not even eight nine. Um,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: it's just a very eighties thing to do. And we
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: also want to mention that we have to tell this story,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: but we don't want to throw United Way under the
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: bus for their um what ultimately ended up being a mistake,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: but a good, well intended, goodhearted mistake. Or George Fraser,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: who was the employee of the Cleveland chapter of the
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: United Way who came up with the idea. I'm sure
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: George again was very well intended and really wanted to
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: create a happy moment for for the city and for
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: the state of Ohio. But like you said, it didn't
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: go well. Um, they knew they needed a lot of balloons.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: And you can't just willy nilly get a bunch of
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: balloons and some volunteers and make it happen. It needs
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: to be planned and coordinated. So they went to who
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: else would you go to for this but Treb Hining. Yeah,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: who is a balloon artist and by this time a
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: very very famous balloon artist because he'd done balloons for
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: like the opening ceremony any of the four Olympics in
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and he's done Super Bowls and World's Fairs.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: And he's also known as the man who invented the
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: balloon arch, which you've seen a million times been and
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: like you see that kind of thing, you never think
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: like somebody had to be the first one to put
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: one of those together. Well, that's true. And it was
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Treb Hynding or Henning, I'm not sure how you say
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: his last name. Um, who did that. And he did
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: it actually for the third birthday of Share and Greg
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Allmond's son, Elijah Blue. That's where the balloon arch came from.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Was SHARE's son's third birthday party. Yeah, I would. Um.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I did a little bit more research on treb Hynding
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and I don't want to go down that rabbit hole.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: But he he's always been a big balloon guy. I
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: think when he was like a teenager, he was some
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: sort of junior balloon captain at disney World or Disneyland.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: So made it his career, which is really neat, and
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: spent a lot of time on this. It took about
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: six months of planning and built a big rectangular structure
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: right there on the public Square downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Have
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: you have you seen? Have you seen video footage of this?
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: And I've been in that square, So that structure must
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: have been maybe the most magical place on earth for
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: those for that day, for those few hours they were
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: filling up those balloons, don't you think until they released them? Yeah? Right,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: that's the irony. Uh. It was huge. It was two
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty by a hundred and fifty feet, about
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: three stories tall. It's got this netting obviously to hold
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: everything in. Apparently the same people that made the cargo
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: nets for the Space Shuttle chipped in and made this
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: mesh net and they had a student volunteers about student
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: volunteers who sold these sponsorships to raise money and then
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: blowing up these balloons. Yeah. So they were actually sitting
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: inside this structure, which is an open air structure but
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: was covered at the top by that cargo net, and everybody,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: like hundreds of them just sitting They're filling up healium balloons.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: And then when you filled it up and tied the balloon,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: you just let it go and it floated up and
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: it got was trapped by the cargo net, and it's
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: more and more balloons were just constantly being added to it.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: It was like this growing mass of multi colored balloons
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: all just you know, thirty ft above everyone's head. It
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: was really neat to see like footage of that stuff
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: in there. UM. And apparently they were going to go
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: for two million balloons. That was the original idea, UM,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: and they were going to break Disneyland's record UM, which
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: must have been better sweet for Trep hinding Um from
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: a year before for the thirtieth anniversary of the park,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Disneyland released one million, two hundred thousand and nineties six balloons,
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  Speaker 1: and the United ways that we're gonna release two million
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: here in Cleveland. All right, So that's a perfect cliffhanger.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Let's take a break and talk about what mother Nature
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: had to say about all of this right after this.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: All right, so you've got uh, well, you've got two
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: million balloons. You're gonna blow up. They probably had a
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: few spares for breakage and stuff like that, or poppage
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: as they call it in the biz, and um, they're
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: blowing these things up. The weather turns bad. It is Cleveland,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: it is right there on the lake, like you mentioned,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: and the weather can be very dicey there by the lake.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: And it's late September too, yeah, which means it's the
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: dead of winter pretty much. Now it's fault. But it
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: gets really windy and really cold by the lake, like
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: big time winds. And the weather turned bad, and they said,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: you know what, let's just stop at one point five million.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: That still breaks the record. It still looks amazing. They
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: start to get a little bit nervious, and then they
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: finally said, all right, we gotta go here. It's one
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: fifty on Saturday, and they lift this net off an
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: unleash one point five million balloons and it is amazing looking.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: It really is. Um like that that net was lifted
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: off by larger balloons, and like that was pretty cool
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: in and of itself. But as these balloons start to
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: move their way out from under the net um, they're like,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: it's just like this huge writhing mass, Like they don't
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: just immediately separate their kind of moving together as like
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: it was like a living thing, yeah, or like a
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: cloud rising in the sky made of balloons. But now
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: you're right, it did look like a living thing, especially
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: because they released it right around in public square, right
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: around them what is the Terminal Tower, which is a
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: like a fifty two story skyscraper in downtown Cleveland, and
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: it just kind of like wrapped and writhed and moved
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: around the building. It just it was really cool looking
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: for about don't thirty forty seconds, I would say, and
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: then things really started to go badly that people are like,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: is he going to say minutes, please say minutes? Nope,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: thirty minutes of joy, yeah, no, nothing like that. It
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: was much more short lived than that. The joy was. Yeah,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: So then things get weird. Um a lot these balloons
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: basically just have a mind to their own at this point.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: A lot of them, because of the cold air, were
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: just pushed back down to the ground. So imagine a
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: million balloons and what kind of it's hard to say
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: destruction because you're still talking about balloons, but just chaos
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: that a million and a half balloons cause when they're
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: coming back down to the ground in traffic and over
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the water and over oh, I don't know, a horse
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: farm where a woman named Louise Nowakowski was raising some
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: very expensive Arabian horses who freaked out and got injured
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and she ended up suing. Yeah. I mean, like there
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: were a lot of stories that came from, like you said,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: kay as Um that that erupted from these balloons coming
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: back down, because I mean, the original plan was these
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: balloons were just gonna go up, up, up, and they're
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: eventually going to start to disperse, and in in the
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: United Ways defense, the balloons were supposed to supposedly um
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: especially made natural latex balloons, which would eventually biodegrade. UM.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: But they would by the time they like came back
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: down to the ground um and lost you know, all
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: of their air, they would have been you know, days
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: or weeks later, and um they would have been so
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: far separated there shouldn't have really been any kind of
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: problem whatsoever. The you know, this huge, massive million balloons
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: didn't disperse at all. They just started to move together.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: And when you see footage of this stuff like like
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: all over Lake Erie or coming down in fields and
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: stuff like that, it's just it's insane, how many different
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: how many balloons there really are just right back down
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: on the ground a minute or so after they were
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: really east. Oh yeah, they're coming down in the lake,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: They're coming down in the Cayugar River. Uh, They're they're
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: coming down wherever they want to come down. And like
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: we said, the one lady sued I think for a
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars for those Arabian horses undisclosed settlement. Um.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: The Burke Lakefront Airport had to shut down for half
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: an hour. Uh. There were traffic collisions on the highways. Uh.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: And then there was one sort of genuinely sad story
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: because of some lost fishermen that the Coast Guard had
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: to suspend their search and rescue for because of these balloons. Yeah,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: these two guys, um Raymond Broderick and Bernard Solzer had
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: gone They've gone out fishing in like a little open boat,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: and their boat was discovered later, but they weren't they
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: were nowhere to be seen. So the coast Guard was
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: looking for them out on Lake Erie, which normally Um
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: they they may very well have found them, because there's
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: not really many things that are saying orange like a
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: life jacket or you know, like white like a head
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: or something bobbing around in Lake Erie under normal circumstances.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Because so many of these balloons came down and just
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: landed still inflated on the lake. The coast guard was like,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: I can't I can't see anything. Everything looks like an
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: orange life fester at somebody's head bobbing. And they actually
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: had to, like you said, call off the search because
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: they were just getting nowhere they couldn't differentiate anything from
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the balloons. Yeah, the whole thing costs five hundred thousand dollars.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I think that woman's I think the one of the
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: wives of the fishermen actually sued um and again, uh
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: financially not disclosed settlement, so we really don't know about
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: these terms of these settlements. But they did spend five
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars in the whole thing on top of these settlements.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: So the whole thing just makes me feel terrible for
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the United Way, for Cleveland, for George Fraser. It just
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: it's just a sad story, It really is, especially when
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: you watch some of like the news footage from that day. Um,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: they were so happy, they were so excited, like they
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: genuinely were like, this is going to turn the page
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: for Cleveland, Like this will change Cleveland forever for the better.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: This one thing, which is pretty questionable, you know, like
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: putting that much stock into a balloon release in a
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: world record, which they did get by the way. They
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: did a Guinness recognize them as the largest balloon release ever. Um,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: but it's still like they were they were trying to
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: undo one, um terrible reputation for an environmental disaster, the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Coyahoga River catching fire, and they ended up replacing it
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: with another notorious environmental disaster. These a million and a
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: half balloons just clogging up everything and screwing things up. Yeah,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: and uh, I think many lessons were learned that day.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: They really weren't. Don't release a million and a half
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: balloons all at once. Have you got anything else? I
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: got nothing else. I love you, Cleveland. Yeah, way to go, Cleveland.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: We still love you no matter what. And since we
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: said that, everybody that means, of course, that short stuff
• 13:07
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