Episode Details

The Cleveland Balloonfest Disaster of 1986 | Episode 69
Balloons often represent happiness, but if you’ve ever had to explain to a crying child why their balloon flew away and won’t be coming back, you know that balloons are monsters.

On this new and much requested episode: you’ll learn the origin of the phrase, “it seemed like a good idea at the time”; we learn why Cleveland is called the Mistake by the Lake, and we’ll see what is probably the most amount of damage one could possibly hope to achieve with balloons.

And if you are thinking of listening to this as a Patreon supporter, for the first time ever, there are TWO ENTIRE MINISODES within this episode that no one else will get to hear

The first on the Cuyahoga River Fire Disaster of 1969; and a second on the Cleveland 10¢ Beer Night Disaster of 1974. We also look at the horrible history of promotions and publicity stunts that backfired catastrophically; and we learned why you never fire guns.

About the actual main story here, we are definitely in a Cleveland state of mind, and I will tell you this one quote from the episode:

Literally no part of this came together like it was supposed to, and in keeping with Cleveland’s long habit of not having things go it’s way, one observer was quoted as saying “it's actually quite impressive how badly it turned out”. There are terrorist attacks that aren't as successful as balloon fest.


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