The $5 million balloon came tantalizingly close to launching this morning.

The banners and balloons may have come down, but the people of this cold city were far from glum today.

"The crowd was going 'Whoa' whenever the balloons were coming and bouncing around," she said.

The balloon came in, being a nurse, and then the doctor.

But the air inside the envelope had cooled and the balloon was coming down.

I was way up high, about 125 feet, when these two balloons came out of nowhere.

As the balloons came down, the ladies would begin frantically trying to catch them.

During more than an hour he searched at different altitudes: the balloon always came back toward the mainland.

Nobody believed the balloons could have come directly from Japan.

There a valve was released and the balloon came down again.