Awesome Or Off-Putting: The Exploding Whale of 1970 (With Video)

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Quick! Name three things that are better than an exploding whale!

Can’t think of anything? That’s because - and we mean this literally - nothing is better than one of those big fat air-fish going boom. Imploding tigers would be better, but on this point science is still scratching their collective heads.

Consider yourselves lucky - because we have whale-video of it right here!

In 1970 Florence, Oregon, a dead sperm whale washed ashore, and everything that touched it got pregnant. Just kidding - except the thing really did wash up. As it sat there decomposing, the stench created a neighborhood-wide discomfort. Authorities had no idea what to do - until someone suggested they stuff it full of dynamite and blow it to smithereens.

Which they did.

It was supposed to turn the thing pretty much into a fine mist, except for the larger pieces which would still be quite small and manageable. Seagulls would eat the scraps and the whale problem would be done away with forever.

Of course it didn’t work like that. Whale chunks soared heavenward, and for a few long seconds no doubt the people probably thought their problem was solved. Then blubber chunks started to rain down for miles - some pieces of which were heavy enough to crush cars. Look what Wikipedia has on it:

“The resulting explosion was caught on film by television photographer Doug Brazil for a story reported by news reporter Paul Linnman of KATU-TV in Portland, Oregon. In his voiceover, Linnman joked that “land-lubber newsmen” became “land-blubber newsmen”, for “the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.”[4] The explosion caused large pieces of blubber to land some distance away from the beach, some of which caused heavy damage to a nearby car.”

Almost forty years later and the lucky participants have become Youtube famous. And deservedly so - watch it here.

Read More:

Exploding Whale - Wikipedia