5 stunning photos from Cleveland's infamous balloonfest

Launch more than one million balloons into the air—what could possibly go wrong? If you're Cleveland, absolutely everything. The world-record-breaking stunt took place in 1986, when nearly 1.5 million balloons were set free from the city's Public Square. Great fun, except for the fact that 1.5 million balloons is an awful lot of balloons and, eventually, they return to Earth. In this case, they polluted beaches, spooked horses, and interfered with a rescue mission on Lake Erie, resulting in lawsuits in the latter two cases. The best results from that day, in fact, are probably right here on this page: the incredible images from the last-in-a-lifetime event/environmental mini-disaster that resurfaced on Tumblr today. [Source]

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