Balloonfest ’86. September 27, 1986. Cleveland, Ohio.

The road to balloon hell is paved with good, inflated intentions.

Such was the case on this particular Midwestern day in the Rock N’ Roll capital, when a world record was broken by the United Way after they released a million and a half helium-filled balloons — and two people died.

The stunt, the brainchild of professional balloon mastermind Treb Heining, was supposed to be a harmless publicity event aimed to raise money. Released over the southwest quadrant of Public Square by 2,500 students and volunteers, the floating mass of airy rubber orbs took a disastrous (and unplanned) turn and moved back over the city, Lake Erie and the densely-occupied land around it.

The consequences were many. Most of them were just matters of inconvenience. One of them, though, was deadly. The tragedy involved the hamstringing of the United States Coast Guard and the messy aftermath of those damn, dirty balloons.

Here’s the story from Wikipedia:

The balloons collided with a front of cool air and rain and dropped towards the ground, clogging the land and waterways of Northeast Ohio. In the days following the event, balloons were reported washed ashore on the Canadian side of Lake Erie.

Two fishermen, Raymond Broderick and Bernard Sulzer, who had gone out on September 26, were reported missing by their families on the day of the event. Rescuers spotted their 16-foot (4.9 m) boat anchored west of the Edgewater Park breakwall. A Coast Guard search and rescue helicopter crew had difficulties reaching the area because of the “asteroid field” of balloons. On September 29, the Coast Guard suspended its search. The fishermen’s bodies subsequently washed ashore. The wife of one of the fishermen sued the United Way of Cleveland and the company that organized the balloon release for $3.2 million and later settled on undisclosed terms.

Balloons landing on a pasture in Medina County, Ohio, spooked Louise Nowakowsk’s Arabian horses, which suffered permanent injuries as a result. Nowakowsk sued the United Way of Cleveland for $100,000 in damages and settled for undisclosed terms.

Burke Lakefront Airport had to shut down a runway for half an hour after balloons landed there. Traffic accidents were also reported “as drivers swerved to avoid slow motion blizzards of multicolored orbs or took their eyes off the road to gawk at the overhead spectacle”.