'Could a kid float away on a balloon?' People have short memories...

It was just 27 years ago, on July 2, 1982, that one Larry Walters (above and below) astounded the world when he "... took flight in... Inspiration 1, a 'flying machine' [which] consisted of an ordinary patio chair with 45 helium-filled weather balloons attached to it. Walters rose to an altitude of 16,000 feet and floated from his point of origin in San Pedro, California into controlled airspace near Los Angeles International Airport."

True.

According to an FAA regional safety inspector, "... the flying lawn chair was spotted by TWA and Delta jet pilots at 16,000 feet."

Wrote Bob Collins of Minnesota Public Radio, "Lawn Chair Larry — Larry Walters — tied helium balloons to this lawn chair in 1982...

... with the idea that he'd go for a short flight, just to see what it was like. He miscalculated things, though, and ended up soaring to 16,000 feet, where the pilot of an airliner uttered -- for the first time in history -- the words, 'I've just passed a guy flying in a lawn chair.'

"Lawn Chair Larry's plan was to shoot out the balloons with a pellet gun when it was time to descend, but he dropped the gun. He eventually landed in Long Beach."

But I guess because it happened before the Internets, it never really happened at all.

How else to explain Margaret Shapiro's October 20, 2009 Washington Post Science section story whose headline is in quotes (in mine) up top, which doesn't even mention Walters?