Have You Heard Of Custer Ballooning?

I was listening to a podcast talking about a man who filled up 45 balloons and tied them to a lawn chair and ascended 16,000 feet into the air. He was spotted by two commercial aircraft. He brought with him a pellet gun to shoot some balloons when he was ready to decend, and a parachute. Plus a CB radio, sandwiches, beer, and a camera. He did get in trouble for this little stunt and got fined 4,000. He came down on a powerline and caused a blackout. He was known as lawn chair larry after this.

I heard about another that happened many years after this one. Referred to the balloon boy hoax, where a father claimed his six-year-old son claimed into his cluster balloon contraption that looked like a spaceship and he was up in it alone. Only to find out later it was a lie and he had done this for his five minutes of fame. I remember this one vividly.

So I wanted to find out how many people have attempted or succeeded at cluster ballooning and here is a little list of a couple of them.

1. January 1st, 1984: Kevin Walsh made it 9,000 feet into the air.

2. August 4th, 2001: Mike Howard (UK) and Steve Davis (USA) made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for reaching a height of over 18,300 feet.

3. On November 23rd, 1992: Yoshikazu Suzuki left on his cluster ballooning attempt. He was last seen on November 25th by the Japanese National Guard, and never seen again.

4. July 7th, 2007: Kent Couch flew 240 miles and traveled about 22 miles per hour.

5. On January 13th, 2008, Brazilian Roman Catholic priest Adelir Antonio de Carli reached 17,400 feet. Then again on April 20th, 2008 he tried again and never returned. The lower half of his body was on July 4th, 2008.

And there are a few more. I never even heard of half of these people. I honestly only heard of the hoax one and lawn chair Larry. This was pretty interesting to find out. I did not even know that more people are still working on cluster ballooning as their hobby. I shouldn't be alarmed. Just like finding out the millions of ways to make money online, there are millions of hobbies or even ways to make money offline. People will do anything for fame nowadays. Even reading back in 1785 the first hydrogen-hot-air balloon accident ended up with no survivors. I did not know it went back that far even. Learn something new every day.

Have you heard of these stories in the news when they came out? How old were you? I know one I was really young like 7. For the second one, I was like 17. I can't remember if I just I remember the first when it happened or if I heard about it a few years later. I know I vividly remember the hoax boy one. That made me upset that he would have to lie and get all the police and everyone involved in helping find his son that never went up in the contraption in the first place.

Liars have always gotten under my skin. Even back at 17 years old I remember disliking liars. When people have to lie it only ruins the world and people's faith in people and if anyone knows how to tell the truth anymore. I think it even had gotten worse after covid.

I thought it was pretty interesting and thought you might like it too.