Walexplosion

Beached whale, pre-explosion

In November 1970 a 45-foot, 8-ton Grey Whale beached itself near Florence, Oregon and died. The Oregon Highway Division (now known as the Oregon Department of Transportation) had jurisdiction over beaches and so was given the task of removing the carcass. They decided that it would be best to remove the whale in the same manner as the removal of a boulder. On November 12 1970 they used half a ton of dynamite to blow the whale up.

The explosion and results

The course of action to blow up the whale was decided because it was thought that burying the whale would be ineffective as it would soon be uncovered, while the use of dynamite would cause an explosion that would disintegrate the whale into pieces that were small enough for scavengers to clear up. The engineer in charge of the operation, a Mr. George Thornton, explained[1] that one set of charges might not be enough, so more could be used.

The resulting explosion was caught on tape by television news reporter Paul Linnman, who described himself as a land-blubber and reported that "the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds." The explosion caused large pieces of blubber to land quite some distance away from beach, resulting in a smashed car, scared scavengers (who all took off), and massive chunks of whale meat that couldn't be eaten by scavengers anyway. The explosion also didn't get rid of most of the whale, which remained on the beach for the Oregon Highway Division workers to clear away.

While this story was widely known on Usenet for quite some time (in particular it was discussed on alt.folklore.urban, a newsgroup devoted to urban legends) Dave Barry reported that he had footage of the event in a 1990 column. This footage, taken by KATU Channel 2 for the news story reported by Paul Linnman, resurfaced later as a movie file on several websites[2][3]. These websites have been attacked by animal rights activists who complain that they are making fun out of acts of cruelty to animals, even though the whale was already dead.

Taiwan

Another, similar incident happened on January 29, 2004, in the town of Tainan, Taiwan, when a build-up of gas in a decomposing Sperm whale measuring 17 metres long and weighing 50 tons caused it to explode [4].

Popular culture

Australian children's book author Paul Jennings also wrote a book called Uncanny!: Even More Surprising Stories (ISBN 0140375767) that features an exploding whale.

External links

Oregon's whale

Snopes.com Critter Country (thar she blows) - also includes more information on George Thornton and the car that got damaged by the whale
Hackstadt.com Exploding whale, video footage, transcript
The Infamous Exploding Whale
Oregon Department of Transportation