February 29, 1908

Posted on February 29, 2020 by Joel Byers

On February 29, 1908, Dutch scientists produced solid helium for the first time. The party balloons proposed using solid helium for the discovery party were found to be an utter failure. They were found to float like the proverbial lead balloon.

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About Joel Byers

Born in North Georgia and educated at some very fine public institutions. Real education started after graduating from college and then getting married and raising two boys. Has the ability to see the funny and absurd in most things and will always remark on it, even if it means getting the stink-eye from his victims.
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One Response to February 29, 1908

  1. Bogo the Clown says:
    March 3, 2020 at 10:53 pm

    This is all well and good, but there is a much more abundant, readily available resource, if we would simply choose to avail ourselves of it: Hydrogen. I know what you’re thinking, but you only believe that hydrogen is dangerous, because Big Helium keeps us all scared, so they can corner the lighter-than-air market. In reality, hydrogen is safe as houses.

    Big Helium would like us to think that hydrogen is supposedly “flammable” and “explosive”, but the true fact is that it’s cheaper and easier to get than helium — THAT is what they don’t want us to know. As a matter of fact, I use hydrogen in all my party balloons and it works great! Admittedly, there was a bit of a fire that one time, or two, and maybe some things did kind of explode, but that wasn’t because of the hydrogen. It was the candles on the cake that were the real menace (and I have long suspected that candles were probably to blame for the so-called Hindenburg disaster).

    Just to put everybody’s fears to rest though, I do store all my balloons in asbestos-lined containers, so even if there was somehow a fire (which there won’t be), there would be absolutely no danger. I even have everyone at the party closely examine the lining before each and every show. I honestly don’t see how I could make things any safer than that.

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