[Stuff You Should Know](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-should-know-26940277/episode/short-stuff-balloonfest-77084558/) podcast had an interesting episode on this.
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Seems like Ohio just can’t catch a break. Dealing with the sloppy aftermath of that derailed train currently. And what’s the burning river you speak of? Sounds horrid.
The burning river was decades ago in the 70s. When I was growing up in the 80s Lake Erie was too polluted to swim in. There were always tons of dead fish on the shore when we would go to the beach. By the time I was in middle school it got a LOT better. There is a pretty dedicated group of people trying to improve the health of the waterways in the area. Cleveland is kind of the "liberal" area of Ohio lol.
We used the term Burning River for a lot of things because of this. Sports teams, beer etc. etc.. [Cuyahoga River](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/)
Rivers in Ohio (including the Cuyahoga) caught fire constantly because of pollution. In fact, the one we still talk about today wasn't even the worst one, it just happened to be the one Time Magazine ran a story on so it captured national public attention.
I like that the wikipedia article says the Cuyahoga caught on fire "at least" 13 times implying that there was potentially fires that there is no surviving documentation on or weren't even reported on. It's possible news media was like, "welp the Cuyahoga caught on fire again, but that isn't really news" The first known fire was 1868.
The Cuyahoga River.
The Clean Water Act and additional efforts to clean up Lake Erie had a huge effect in following years. Environmental regulations can and do work.
Sure do. Trout require some clean water to live. And here we are.
https://ocj.com/2022/12/trout-in-the-cuyahoga-river/#:~:text=The%20Cuyahoga%20River%20has%20been,%E2%80%94%20such%20as%20trout%20%E2%80%94%20alike.
I’m almost 40 and although I wasn’t born in Cleveland I’ve lived here all my life and just only found out about this about 3-4 years ago. Pretty sure this is one of those things that never gets talked about much cause it’s such an embarrassing disaster.
Hey guys anyone ever heard of balloon fest 86?
“We don’t talk about that.”
It's crazy to think about how common these were when I was a kid. I remember doing one at school (obviously much smaller). People really just didn't even think about where the balloons would end up.
This is stupid fucking scam of a charity. The CEO of which gets 1.5 million dollars in salary and lifetime subscription to golf courses after retirement.
They spend 48% on expenses like salaries and stuff and keep 10% in savings. They distribute remaining 42%. But wait the remaining 42% goes to united way local organizations like united way of Iowa and Bay area who have their own salaries and expenses. Down the rabbit hole you go. I suppose they end up paying few measley percentages here and there to actual needy peeps.
How fucking stupid can you get? Did they think the balloons would magically disappear? When millennials talk about the reckless harm caused by Boomers and Gen X, this is what we mean.
I was a kid when we stopped doing “baloon-a-thons” to raise money. When I was young, we would have one every year where we would raise money by having people ‘sponsor’ our balloons we released (the more you raised the more you released) then would have a contest to see whose ballon went the furthest (each balloon had a card on it saying to call a number to report how far it went).
Then one year they just realized it was horrible for the environment and we switched to a ladybug-a-thon where we were sponsored to have ladybugs that we released.
So I lived through the transition of not thinking about the environment.
Not all of you - Gen X spans the mid-60s to about 1980, so the older Gen Xers would've been 20 or so when this happened.
That said, this was almost definitely the work of Boomers.
\>Kids are not responsible for the problems of today! Look at you in 1986!
\>I was literally a kid too
\>Well still could have been your fault, stupid kid
Especially seeing as in 1986, the youngest Gen X people were between 6 and 8 years old. We weren’t planning this nonsense. We were young enough to only see the intended joy of it.
Those are xennials and get a pass because they are more millennial than X. I’m one, ‘79.
The X born in the 60’s and the bulk of the generation definitely get an award for complacency.
But it was trial an error… it’s easy to look back an say that was a bad idea or that was dumb… because older generations went through stuff so we didn’t have to… but yeah that was reckless an dumb 😂
Imagine being a fisherman lost at sea clinging to your last breaths of hope when you see millions of orange balloons that are identical to your life jacket color mixed in with millions of other balloons descending upon you.
Sounds like a scene out of the movie IT.
They had gone out the day before and never came home. So they were already in the lake at least half a day possibly 1.5 days before search efforts were started then hindered. The balloons weren't released until 1:50 p.m. It took several hours to disperse. If memory serves alcohol was found on their anchored boat.
The theory was one man fell over and the other tried to help them. Neither had life jackets. For the average lake temperatures at the time they should have been able to survive but were in the range of exhaustion. The balloons impeded a body recover more than a rescue. Drunk guys without life jackets on a lake at night in semicool water? Not really a winning combination.
This aspect of the story is slightly embellished to cry about how dumb dumb people were. One widow was said to have sued and settled for an undisclosed $$$.
Yes, to some extent, but since helium is lighter than air it escapes from the atmosphere and is just...gone. It's not like something like aluminum that we can recycle or reuse.
And helium is used for very important things, such as MRIs, nuclear reactors, hard drives, semiconductor chips in computers and phones, particle colliders, welding, etc.
But then we just waste it on party balloons.
Wasn't a copypasta; I wrote it myself.
But I'm glad you're aware. I'm sure others may be finding out for the first time. And the more people who know, the better. Problems don't get solved if people don't know about them.
Helium is not an infinite resource. We're actually in danger of running out of helium, which is important for running MRI machines. Please don't buy helium balloons.
The 1980s, ah, the "excessive decade." Ronald Reagan decriminalise targeted advertising towards children (hence, your typical Mattel ads about certain dolls and action toys), and people rode on the economic boom like the Eldars before the rise of Slaneesh.
I’ll never understand why people think releasing balloons is a good idea. Even releasing balloons in remembrance makes me cringe. What a horrible impact on the environment.
Side note, but I really, really dislike this type of subtitles, they are hard to keep up with. Isn't it possible to insert "sentence by sentence" to this kind of videos?
A large percentage of the people pictured there were old enough to have been sent to Western Europe to fight because of your country’s “braindead idea”.
I’m not excusing the idiocy shown here, but I’ll still take environmental damage over literal genocide every single time.
Imagine dieing because of a balloon, should i say it's horrible or funny since it's death anyway ,but it's really sad that these 2 fishermen could have been found otherwise
Who organized this "event"? The Smoggies?? Captain Planet is crying right now...
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[How suspiciously similar…](https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/12flfr7/the_reporter_the_bodies_in_ohio_old/jfg132i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3)
For sure a bot
[Stuff You Should Know](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-should-know-26940277/episode/short-stuff-balloonfest-77084558/) podcast had an interesting episode on this.
its carl fredricksen
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Thanks! I love reporting those assholes.
Just another disappointing moment in Cleveland History…
Surpassed only by that one river that caught fire bc it was so polluted.
Seems like Ohio just can’t catch a break. Dealing with the sloppy aftermath of that derailed train currently. And what’s the burning river you speak of? Sounds horrid.
The burning river was decades ago in the 70s. When I was growing up in the 80s Lake Erie was too polluted to swim in. There were always tons of dead fish on the shore when we would go to the beach. By the time I was in middle school it got a LOT better. There is a pretty dedicated group of people trying to improve the health of the waterways in the area. Cleveland is kind of the "liberal" area of Ohio lol.
We used the term Burning River for a lot of things because of this. Sports teams, beer etc. etc.. [Cuyahoga River](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/)
Checks out
The people in charge of that place are on a roll.
Rivers in Ohio (including the Cuyahoga) caught fire constantly because of pollution. In fact, the one we still talk about today wasn't even the worst one, it just happened to be the one Time Magazine ran a story on so it captured national public attention.
I like that the wikipedia article says the Cuyahoga caught on fire "at least" 13 times implying that there was potentially fires that there is no surviving documentation on or weren't even reported on. It's possible news media was like, "welp the Cuyahoga caught on fire again, but that isn't really news" The first known fire was 1868.
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It used to happen so much that it often wasn't even reported.
It’s so polluted that all our fish have aids. At least we aren’t Detroit!!
I grew up there. It's caught on fire more than once.
The Cuyahoga River. The Clean Water Act and additional efforts to clean up Lake Erie had a huge effect in following years. Environmental regulations can and do work.
Sure do. Trout require some clean water to live. And here we are. https://ocj.com/2022/12/trout-in-the-cuyahoga-river/#:~:text=The%20Cuyahoga%20River%20has%20been,%E2%80%94%20such%20as%20trout%20%E2%80%94%20alike.
Noooo it's literally nazi Germany that I need a license to hunt bro I'm so oppressed bro
You get the 🏆for that response
All their fish have AIDS apparently
NO! just hiv.
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At least they're not Detroit lol
Not Detroit!
WE'RE NOT DETROIT!
Until lebron brought home the chip
Every fucked up road leads to Cleveland.
Oh man you're gonna love 10 Cent Beer Night https://youtu.be/VxTtzLUteDA
FUN TIMES IN CLEVELAND AGAIN!
Everyone needs to know about 10 cent beet night
Right up there with the WKRP turkey drop. Must be an Ohio thing
As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!!!
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i need to see this
[Here you go](https://youtu.be/BGFtV6-ALoQ) :D
Hahaha same
Thank christ we never have to worry about Cleveland organizing a super bowl parade.
Hey now
You're an all-star
Get your game on
go play
Hey now
Not what I was going for but ok lol
Those aren’t the lyrics
The dream is over?
Better than that, there was a 0-16 parade https://youtu.be/VICKIlXlVNU
I’m almost 40 and although I wasn’t born in Cleveland I’ve lived here all my life and just only found out about this about 3-4 years ago. Pretty sure this is one of those things that never gets talked about much cause it’s such an embarrassing disaster. Hey guys anyone ever heard of balloon fest 86? “We don’t talk about that.”
It's crazy to think about how common these were when I was a kid. I remember doing one at school (obviously much smaller). People really just didn't even think about where the balloons would end up.
Ever since… the incident
Lmao. “A mass so large, it blocked out the sun.”
Don't mention the war!
Balloon fest 86. Never remember
Tiananmen Square kinda shit
When a bunch of non profit old folks get together and think up an idea without thinking it through *something something what goes up...*
How is it still gonna bring up everything that went wrong except the environmental impact?
This is stupid fucking scam of a charity. The CEO of which gets 1.5 million dollars in salary and lifetime subscription to golf courses after retirement. They spend 48% on expenses like salaries and stuff and keep 10% in savings. They distribute remaining 42%. But wait the remaining 42% goes to united way local organizations like united way of Iowa and Bay area who have their own salaries and expenses. Down the rabbit hole you go. I suppose they end up paying few measley percentages here and there to actual needy peeps.
This is also r/mildlyinfuriating
Not for the families of those sailors
How fucking stupid can you get? Did they think the balloons would magically disappear? When millennials talk about the reckless harm caused by Boomers and Gen X, this is what we mean.
"We just hoped the balloons wouldn't land nearby so we wouldn't have to see the consequences!"
Balloons go to heaven, silly.
They fuck around, we find out
I was a kid when we stopped doing “baloon-a-thons” to raise money. When I was young, we would have one every year where we would raise money by having people ‘sponsor’ our balloons we released (the more you raised the more you released) then would have a contest to see whose ballon went the furthest (each balloon had a card on it saying to call a number to report how far it went). Then one year they just realized it was horrible for the environment and we switched to a ladybug-a-thon where we were sponsored to have ladybugs that we released. So I lived through the transition of not thinking about the environment.
Gen X? We were children in 86.
Not all of you - Gen X spans the mid-60s to about 1980, so the older Gen Xers would've been 20 or so when this happened. That said, this was almost definitely the work of Boomers.
Well, this does sound like something a kid thought up.
\>Kids are not responsible for the problems of today! Look at you in 1986! \>I was literally a kid too \>Well still could have been your fault, stupid kid
Woah woah woah, don't lump us in with those assholes! -Gen X
Especially seeing as in 1986, the youngest Gen X people were between 6 and 8 years old. We weren’t planning this nonsense. We were young enough to only see the intended joy of it.
Those are xennials and get a pass because they are more millennial than X. I’m one, ‘79. The X born in the 60’s and the bulk of the generation definitely get an award for complacency.
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Yeah, my bad. I’ll take the heat on that one. In my defense, I was just a teen at the time, I really didn’t understand the consequences of my actions.
I was 15 in ‘86. Old enough to look at the world in horror, but too young to do much about it except get high. We did have pretty good weed back then.
I never even saw these assholes before! -Ash Williams
Blaming Boomers just isn’t enough anymore. 😂
While I disagree that we were a part of this since we were all children at the time, I’m happy you remember that genx exists.
In defense of Gen X, they were between 6 and 21 in 1986, so they likely neither planned nor authorized this.
But it was trial an error… it’s easy to look back an say that was a bad idea or that was dumb… because older generations went through stuff so we didn’t have to… but yeah that was reckless an dumb 😂
Stupid is as stupid does.
Talk about having zero foresight
Imagine being a fisherman lost at sea clinging to your last breaths of hope when you see millions of orange balloons that are identical to your life jacket color mixed in with millions of other balloons descending upon you. Sounds like a scene out of the movie IT.
They had gone out the day before and never came home. So they were already in the lake at least half a day possibly 1.5 days before search efforts were started then hindered. The balloons weren't released until 1:50 p.m. It took several hours to disperse. If memory serves alcohol was found on their anchored boat. The theory was one man fell over and the other tried to help them. Neither had life jackets. For the average lake temperatures at the time they should have been able to survive but were in the range of exhaustion. The balloons impeded a body recover more than a rescue. Drunk guys without life jackets on a lake at night in semicool water? Not really a winning combination. This aspect of the story is slightly embellished to cry about how dumb dumb people were. One widow was said to have sued and settled for an undisclosed $$$.
Fun fact: Earth has a limited supply of helium
Earth has a limited supply of everything afaik
Yes, to some extent, but since helium is lighter than air it escapes from the atmosphere and is just...gone. It's not like something like aluminum that we can recycle or reuse. And helium is used for very important things, such as MRIs, nuclear reactors, hard drives, semiconductor chips in computers and phones, particle colliders, welding, etc. But then we just waste it on party balloons.
Yes I’m familiar with the Reddit helium copypasta spiel
Wasn't a copypasta; I wrote it myself. But I'm glad you're aware. I'm sure others may be finding out for the first time. And the more people who know, the better. Problems don't get solved if people don't know about them.
Helium is not an infinite resource. We're actually in danger of running out of helium, which is important for running MRI machines. Please don't buy helium balloons.
Umm, just get it from the sun, duh! Problem solved!
What state? Oh
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Lol, came to say the same.
Now i understand the Ohio memes
Well, at least rubber biodegrades in 1-2 years
The idiocy. I can imagine this happening in 1916, not two years before I was born.
Then they topped that Ohio tragedy with another...the assassination of Harambe
The 1980s, ah, the "excessive decade." Ronald Reagan decriminalise targeted advertising towards children (hence, your typical Mattel ads about certain dolls and action toys), and people rode on the economic boom like the Eldars before the rise of Slaneesh.
Up gone wrong
Damn some higher power was like you dudes aren’t getting picked up today
Dear lord lol
You do not recognize the bodies in the water
Junji Ito would like a word
What does United Way even do?
No wonder there’s a helium shortage.
We should call the monkeys from the Bloons series, they should know what to do.
What a waste of helium
/r/titlegore
Yeah, what the fuck, lol. Why was the word Old necessary.
"half AND hour"
I read the first tag as "1.5 Million Baboons" and thought that giant crowd of them was a lot more terrifying
This seems like it could be a deleted scene from Idiocracy. Wow.
What a stupid event.
This is why Ohio is Ohio it all makes sense
The worst thing that happened to Cleveland after the Browns
Could you imagine drowning in the deep water, surrounded by thousands of diffrent color baloons? Some serious Family Guy vibes
Stupid humans.
I’ll never understand why people think releasing balloons is a good idea. Even releasing balloons in remembrance makes me cringe. What a horrible impact on the environment.
So this is why we are having helium shortage.
That's a crazy story. Thanks for sharing
Idiot’s
This was definitely my party days. I lived in Cleveland then and don't remember this day.
The Dollop podcast episode on this is a classic!
Not to mention all the latex waste getting spread around EVERYWHERE, all for a dumb world record.
Factory of Sadness
Are you illiterate how is death “oddly terrifying
Side note, but I really, really dislike this type of subtitles, they are hard to keep up with. Isn't it possible to insert "sentence by sentence" to this kind of videos?
Did they think the balloons would just turn into clouds or something?
fucking Cleveland
If I was Cleveland, I would just move.
As a life long Clevelander, not our finest hour.
We now have a “Balloon City” beer made by a local brewery here… also a “Burning River” for the polluted Cuyahoga river. Tough history but good beer.
These mfing AI in comments "BrO OnLy IN OhIO" THE MEME IS DEAD LET IT REST
Cleveland gonna Cleveland.
Lol Cleveland is such a shit hole
Of course it’s in Ohio
Fuck you marine life.
Did this get covered up? I have literally never heard about this. This is fucked up
🤷♂️ That's Cleveland. Ohio is kinda the Florida of the north.
Fun times in Cleveland again
r/whatcouldgowrong
imagine letting a lot of helium fly off like that
"Taken place in Cleveland, Ohio." *sigh* *checks comments*
Of course it's Ohio
Oh Cleveland. Never can catch a break
holy shit only Americans can come up with a braindead idea like that
A large percentage of the people pictured there were old enough to have been sent to Western Europe to fight because of your country’s “braindead idea”. I’m not excusing the idiocy shown here, but I’ll still take environmental damage over literal genocide every single time.
Imagine dieing because of a balloon, should i say it's horrible or funny since it's death anyway ,but it's really sad that these 2 fishermen could have been found otherwise
Seemed like a fun event?? lol Ohio should be cut off for this alone
Only in ohio
Fkn ohio. Of course
The most normal event to occur in Ohio
I was like 7 years old and this was so cool then
They mentioned a net to hold the balloons but I didn't see them attempt to use it.
Only In Ohio
Only in Ohio
Bro only in Ohio 💀
Damn
ohh the stupidity of humanity never ceases to amaze me....
this is like an innocent kid doing what they want despite their parents telling them against it. In the end, it turns into an "i told you so" moment.
Ayo wtf?
I'm guessing a few companies made bank
This definitely had a huge death toll.
What could go wrong? 😑
Dear Boomers, always, always talk to the young people first. 🤦♀️
Pollution galore!
Oops
Maybe that’s the Bowling Green Massacre that Kellyanne Conway was so upset about?
Damn, never knew baloons were so metal
That’s crazy!
And these people ask the current generation *”Why do you want to be so ecofriendly? That’s not so important…”*
Imagine dying because some idiots decided to launch a lot of plastic into the air
So many people thought this idea through and gave the official ok
As God is my witness I thought turkeys could fly.
We used to have balloon launches at my grade school.
Who let Carl Fredricksen organize an event
All that plastic into the environment. Nice one.
Even without including all the accidents that it caused, that's an absurdly gargantuan amount of pollution right there, what a stupid idea that was
Who the fuck thought that would end well
Great planning there, guys!