The Internet Lied To Us About BalloonFest 1986

The truth about United Way’s BalloonFest 1986 charity event is completely different from what modern internet stories are saying. By interviewing the organizers of BalloonFest as well as people who took part in it, we discover what really happened after Cleveland students released 1.5 million helium balloons from Public Square.

We fact check the 5 most common beliefs about BalloonFest.

1. Did BalloonFest kill two boaters on Lake Erie?
2. Did BalloonFest cause many injuries and millions of dollars of property damage?
3. Was a massive cleanup effort required following BalloonFest?
4. Did lawsuits cost United Way all the money from the fundraiser, making it a net loss?
5. Did Guinness World Records take the balloon release category out of the book following this event in Cleveland? Did it even recognize BalloonFest as a world record?

Suspend your disbelief for a moment and hear what BalloonFest was really like for all the people who were part of it. What did this event do for the City of Cleveland, which was trying to reinvent itself? What did it mean to over 1,800 students who came together on September 27, 1986?

If BalloonFest became an urban legend in the internet age, it points to a deeper problem with how stories are shared online.

The Real Story of BalloonFest '86 begins with why United Way attempted the Guinness World Record in the first place. George Fraser, Treb Heining, Tom Holowach, Carol Horne and others take us back to Cleveland in the mid-1980s.