Balloon record in the sky!

On September 27, 1986, the United Way charity organization of Kliveland organized a spectacular fundraising festival and made the city known. It was an attempt to set a new Guinness world record for the largest amount of balloons released at the same time. In the city square, a large structure was built like a city block and covered with a mesh. Below it, more than 2,500 volunteers worked for hours to fill helium balloons (2 million balloons). At 13:50, the net was removed from the structure and the balloons were released. The hope was that the balloons would be dispersed and eventually biodegraded. But the weather had other plans.

A cold air front moved the balloons back to the ground where they blocked the streets, and stopped traffic at the airport. Many of the balloons were dispersed on the surface of Lake Erie, where a helicopter and Coast Guard were looking for two fishermen who had disappeared the day before. After their bodies were found, the wife of one of the men, sued United Way, with the reason that balloon balloons made it impossible to search and rescue in time the missing 2 missing persons. Later, thousands of balloons sailed along the banks of Lake Erie. Guinness Book of Records Certified the Balloning Release at Kliveland as the Largest in the World, but except the ugly case for the deaths of 2 people, the festival also caused serious damage to the environment.