The balloon did not know it had been shot

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 07:00:13 -0400

At 3:25 a.m. on August 24, 1998, researchers launched a helium balloon from Vanscoy, Saskatchewan. MANTRA—Middle Atmosphere Nitrogen Trend Assessment—carried instruments for measuring gases involved in stratospheric ozone chemistry.

The measurements mostly happened. The landing did not.

A valve intended to release gas was obstructed, and both the termination system and its backup failed. The balloon drifted east. Off Newfoundland, two CF-18s fired more than 1,000 cannon rounds at it. The researchers had asked the pilots to aim for the suspension point, hoping the instrument package would detach and descend by parachute.

It did not. Neither did the balloon.

This became a dependable story about military embarrassment, but the embarrassment depends on treating every balloon like the rubber kind at a birthday party. MANTRA was about 150 metres high at altitude; laid flat, its envelope would cover several football fields. It was not stretched tight around highly pressurized gas. Small holes were small holes, not an invitation to pop.

The balloon continued over the Atlantic, attracting attention from British and American aircraft, entering Russian airspace and eventually coming down in Finland on September 2. The equipment was returned and reused, with bullet holes in the package and parachute.

A later MANTRA mission document gives the less cinematic accounting. The 1998 flight collected a useful scientific dataset, though some instruments malfunctioned and not every objective could be completed. Subsequent flights built on it.

The newspaper edited the insulin patent

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 18:57:53 -0400

On August 22, 1922, an Eli Lilly patent lawyer named George Schley noticed a problem in the newspaper.

Reports about Elizabeth Hughes’s dramatic treatment in Toronto identified Frederick Banting as an inventor of insulin. The pending American patent application did not. It named Charles Best and James Collip.

That was not a cosmetic omission. American law required the actual inventors to apply. As Schley warned, leaving Banting out could invalidate the patent and possibly amount to misrepresentation.

Banting had wanted his name omitted for an ethical reason: he thought it improper for a doctor to hold a patent on a medical treatment. The application was trying to honour that position. The press made the compromise difficult to sustain. A public story had become evidence that the private paperwork was wrong.

The eventual US patent names Banting, Best and Collip, and identifies them as assignors to the Governors of the University of Toronto. The researchers transferred their rights for one dollar.

That dollar is the part usually remembered. It makes the arrangement sound like a simple refusal to own insulin. It was nearly the opposite. The university needed the patent so nobody else could acquire a blocking monopoly, and so it could control licensing, production standards and distribution while manufacturers learned to make a difficult biological product reliably.

Posts on Little Muddy

The balloon did not know it had been shot

The newspaper edited the insulin patent