On the Assembly Line
"It was like an assembly line, non-stop," said Mandy Basel, a volunteer who was 16 at the time. "I was a tier. I was not a very good tier before the event, but after a while, I could do it with my eyes closed. It didn’t take long to get good at it. And fast—20 seconds a balloon."
Storm on the Horizon
A storm was encroaching, meaning that organizers were forced to execute the release earlier than planned. At 1:50 p.m., a behemoth stream of rainbow balloons was sent spiraling into the sky. The crowd cheered in amazement as a local radio D.J. declared, "There is no 'mistake on the lake' anymore—Cleveland has now broken the Guinness Book of World Records and released over 1,500,000 balloons!"