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As it gets closer to Thanksgiving, some of us look forward to the public spectacle of giant balloons floating through NYC streets that is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
This vintage shot from the 1940 parade shows a simpler balloon version of the Man of Steel taking his place in the parade. Boy, parade balloons sure have come a long way!
Carly received a cat balloon, complete with feet, for her birthday. Her cat Bert didn’t like it. Bert make his feelings pretty clear. -via Buzzfeed
An inflated sculpture named “Is Land” was deployed at the Secret Garden Party music festival in Cambridgeshire, England. The £9,000 helium-filled sculpture is seven meters wide and looks like a chunk of land with grass and trees on top. The island drifted off after someone cut the ropes tethering the balloon on July 24th and is now nowhere to be found. Anyone who sees the island is asked to report it to the project’s website. Donations to the site will go toward getting a second sculpture ready for Burning Man. Link to story. Link to website. -via Fortean Times
You can think of them as artwork with a twist. Balloon twistings, that is. Larry Moss recreated eight iconic artworks completely with balloons. The result is quite impressive:
Designboom has the pics: Linkformer new york street performer larry moss is widely known for his work with latex balloons in creating large-scale installations, sculptures, as well as wearable fashion pieces. his latest work with the medium - which he has dubbed 'airigami' - is the 'master works' series which consists of eight recreations of some of the world's most well-recognized paintings, completely constructed out of balloons. including works by da vinci, andy warhol, and jackson pollock, the pieces are a playful exploration of the representation of art, as well as a means of pushing the boundaries of the underlooked material.
'master works was inspired in part by the perception of my medium as just a child's toy. I decided to create the works of the great masters to gently challenge people's preconceived notions of what art is… and to make them smile!' says moss.
the series appeared in a recently published children's book called 'artist eyes' which encourages its readers to look at their own and other's work with a critical and discerning eye.
Previously on Neatorama: Larry Moss Airigami: American Gothic in Balloon
Photo: Ikunori Yamamoto
Satoshi Itasaka‘s Balloon Bench, inspired by the 1953 French film Le Ballon Rouge, looks like it’s cleverly suspended by floating balloons. In reality, it’s suspended from the ceiling by four anchors concealed by sculptures.
Previously on Neatorama: Real Life Floating House, Inspired by Up
Geocaching is a hobby that’s really “caching” on! Neatoramanaut E6C and his team launched a balloon from North Carolina last Saturday.
After reaching the max altitude of 101,001 feet up, the balloon burst and Sputnik 2010 drifted back down to earth and landed at Plymouth, NC nearly 124 miles away from the launch site and became the first East Coast Geocache into space AND back and is available for logging right where it landed.
Link -Thanks, Scott!
Rudolph the Red-nose Reindeer got into a bit of trouble Saturday when he was impaled on a traffic light pole during the 2010 Dominion Christmas Parade in Richmond, Virginia. Link -Thanks, Comedy Wizard!
On October 28, a team led by Steve Daniels, John Oates and Lester Haines launched a camera-equipped helium balloon that soared to an altitude of 90,000 feet before it collapsed. At that point, it released a paper airplane, named the Vulture I, also equipped with a video camera. The project named Paris (Paper Aircraft Released Into Space) was sponsored by The Register. The Vulture I was recovered from its landing spot in Spain. See the videos at YouTube and find out more from an index of articles at The Register. Link -via the Presurfer
Francesco Bonomi launched a high-altitude balloon last year which took 1144 photos and 15 minutes of video recordings. From that data, he constructed three panoramas (linked at the bottom of the post) from different altitudes. Beware the big black hole in the earth! Link -via b3ta
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Ten years after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade tradition started, the very first Disney character balloon to appear was none other than Mickey Mouse.
Mickey measured over 50 feet tall and was constructed by the Goodyear Rubber Company. Attendants dressed in adult Mickey and Minnie Mouse Halloween costumes guided the gigantic balloon through the streets of New York.
Vintage Disney Memorabilia Blog has the story: Link
Another photo from Flickr user William J. Crawford:
Photo: William J. Crawford [Flickr]
Taking a page from Pixar’s Up, American Jonathan Trappe made a fantastic journey across the English Channel via helium balloons.
Ultimately, his journey proved successful, and Trappe landed in a French cabbage patch. He’s the first person to accomplish such a feat, but it was not his first balloon trip.
Trappe hitched a bunch of balloons to a chair, but his rig was a little more complex than a toy or the house in ‘Up.’ He took navigation equipment, tracking devices and an oxygen system along for the ride, which was approved by aviation officials.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by nmiller.
Get a whole lot of those new Dyson Air Multiplier™ fans and a balloon, and you could have a swell time! -via reddit
From Kham4002 comes the amazing Staticy Cat, Nosey, with his new best friend, balloon.
Just what YouTube needs. Another funny cat video. :)
The inspiration for this video came from our cat actually getting the balloon stuck on himself without any help from us. He had been playing with it for quite a while before he walked over it and got it stuck on his stomach. We decided to re-enact the event.
The music is called “The Alley Cat Song” originally by Frank Bjorn. Not sure who did the MIDI version.
via Unique Daily
The mad scientists at Toshiba are at it again. With the help of Simon Faithful, they created not only the world’s highest HD TV ad, but one of the highest ads period. By attaching their HD cameras to a weather balloon, they sacrificed the cams to make a point. Not only can it perform, look what we can do with it. We can focus on a vintage chair going into space. Beautiful results. Wait for the balloon pop.
Be sure to see the Making Of as well. via todayandtomorrow
Willy Kaemena took this 360° panorama of the 2009 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Hot air Balloons have certainly gone a long way in terms of shapes. Oh, and as far as I know, no Balloon boy hoax is involved in this event
The embed is nice, but the panorama is meant to be exprienced at full screen so head on over to 360 Cities for a much better view: Link – Thanks Jeffrey!
Who needs NASA? Spending less than it costs to take an airplane ride, a handful of industrious Spanish students sent a balloon 100,000 feet into space, tracking it by radio signal via Google Earth.From 20 miles above the Earth’s surface, their handmade spacecraft took compelling photographs of the planet from above which they recovered when they found the landed balloon just over five miles from where they launched it.
The pupils’ incredible school science project has already caught the attention of the University of Wyoming in the US, and the Meteotek team keep those interested updated with regular blogs and updates to their Twitter feed.
Have you ever wondered what happened to that balloon (or le ballon) that slipped out of your hands when you were just a wee lad or lass? This video may explain it all to you.
Adelir Antonio de Carli the ballooning priest has just won one of the most un-coveted awards in history, the Darwin Awards. For those of you who don’t know, they are awarded to those who "remove themselves from the gene pool" in a particularly stupid fashion:
Sitting for more than 19 hours in a lawn chair is not a trivial matter, even in the comfort of your own backyard. The priest took numerous safety precautions, including wearing a survival suit, selecting a buoyant chair, and packing a satellite phone and a GPS. However, the late Adelir Antonio made a fatal mistake.
He did not know how to use the GPS.
The winds changed, as winds do, and he was blown inexorably toward open sea.
Previously on Neatorama: 30 Strangest Deaths in History
Balloon twister Addi Somekh gives a demonstration on making a Bass Instrument with balloons. The instrument is based on the balloon resonator originally concieved by Canadian twister Sean Rooney.
Link: YouTube
