Back In The Good Old Days

United Way Balloon Release Catastrophe. History Gone Wrong in Cleveland, OH.

Alright so in 1986, the United Way of Cleveland wanted to set the world record for releasing the most balloons into the atmosphere.

They bought all the necessary balloons, purchased a huge cargo net made by some place in North Carolina that makes stuff that holds shit together. When they're dropped off the plan is to hold the balloons down as they fill them.

2,500 Students and volunteers spent many hours filling the balloons with helium and releasing them into the net, their goal was 2 million but they stopped at 1.4 million cause weather conditions were turning.

Rain and wind were starting to hit the balloons



That's a helicopter in the circle

The rainstorm was coming in so they released them

A cold front came in and pushed the balloons down, clogging land and waterways

Balloons were reported scattered all the way to the Canadian side of Lake Erie



Canadian Man was fishing and was like, "WTF is this a balloon omg theres more balloons. EVERYONE RUN/"

A group of fisherman were pummeled by balloons on their boat, and some of the balloons got caught in their engine stranding them.Rescuers tried to get to them, but with the asteroid field of balloons were unable to tell the difference between head and balloon, so they died.

The bodies were washed up on the beach with a bunch of balloons like a sad clown massacre'
The wife of one of the fishermen sued the united way and won like 3.2 million dollars.



THE CLEVELAND AIRPORT HAD TO SHUT DOWN FOR 2 DAYS BECAUSE OF THESE BALLOONS



From the wikipedia page:

"as drivers swerved to avoid slow motion blizzards of multicolored orbs or took their eyes off the road to gawk at the overhead spectacle"

How babies traveled by plane in the 60's

Safety Standards, 1960s

Two Armenian women pose with their rifles before going to war against the Ottomans, 1895

New York cop on the subway, 1970.

March 19-20, 1954: Pool playing great Willie Mosconi sets the World Record for most consecutive pool shots with 526 shots in a row being sunk without a miss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Mosconi#526_high_run

1991: Princess Diana shakes hands with an AIDS patient without gloves, a profound gesture that made her a gay hero. "It is hard to find words to express the aching loneliness and rejection I have found them experiencing as they approach the end of their lives...How will we treat them?"

Hitler at the presentation of the Beetle, 1940s.

Forgotten Age of Open-air Schools in the Netherlands, 1957.

An army intelligence officer attends to Hideki Tojo, the Prime Minister of Japan during WWII. Tojo attempted to shoot himself in the heart as U.S. troops approached his residence to arrest him. The bullet missed his heart and instead went through his stomach. Tojo made a full recovery before being tried, found guilty of war crimes, and executed.

A Group of Samurai in front of Egypt's Sphinx, 1864

Man eating rice, China, 1901-1904

Jesse Owens wins gold in Nazi Germany, 1936.

Once a Beatle: When Ringo was ill with tonsillitis, he substituted on drums for 8 concerts & lived a superstar's life for 10 days. But Ringo has returned... Now Jimmie Nicol sits alone in the Melbourne airport, waiting for the plane that will take him back to obscurity (15 June 1964)

Adolf Hitler’s 4th grade class, 1899. The fuhrer-to-be can be seen top row, dead center

Christopher Lee - WWII special operative, Dracula, bond villain, Death, Saruman, Count Dooku, heavy metal vocalist, Knight Bachelor, amid other honors – as a young officer in Vatican City, 1944, shortly after the liberation of Rome.

The original Moulin Rouge the year before it burned down – Paris, France

In 1989, wanting to see how the American’s lived, Boris Yeltsin made an unscheduled visit to Randall’s supermarket in Houston. Between trying free samples of cheese and produce and staring at the meat selections, Yeltsin roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement.

Civil War Veteran Jacob Miller was shot in the forehead on Sept.19th 1863 at Brock Field at Chickamauga. He lived with an open bullet wound for many years, with the last pieces of lead dropping out 31 years after he was first shot. 1911.

"This CD-ROM can hold more information than all the paper that's here below me"- Bill Gates,1994