#421--THE BLEW WHALE

It was a dark and smelly night in the seaside town of Florence, Oregon, on November 12, 1970. An eight-ton (7,300 kg) 45-foot (14 m) long sperm whale had beached itself outside of the town and died. The Oregon Highway Division (a/k/a the Department of Trails and Whales) was in charge of Oregon beaches at the time. The OHD, upon reflecting that not disposing of the decomposing carcass could cause community chaos, concluded that removal of same would be desirable. After consulting with the US Navy, the OHD decided that using dynamite to explode the whale into half-dollar sized gobbets of flesh which would quickly be consumed by seagulls would be the cat's meow.

The OHD engineer in charge of the operation had little experience in blowing up leviathans--he in fact was not the first choice for the job, but his boss, the District Engineer, was off hunting somewhere. Figuring that "more is more," he opted to use twenty cases of dynamite for the task, even though a military veteran with explosives training had advised him that only twenty sticks would be quite adequate.

It was a carnival atmosphere on the day of detonation. Curious bystanders, news crews, and photographers (some seeking, no doubt, the prints of whales) eagerly assembled around the site. The engineer set off the charges. In a scene reminiscent of the Hindenburg disaster and the infamous WKRP turkey bombing episode, outbursts of enthusiasm ("Thar she blows!") quickly transformed into shrieks of horror.

The whale did explode--but not into little gobbets of flesh. Huge hundred-pound boulders of rancid, decomposing blubber and putrid viscera rained down upon the crowd, lending a new dimension to the term "blowing chunks." The stench was simply offal. Ironically, the brand new Oldsmobile belonging to the above-mentioned military veteran with explosives training was in the line of fire and was crushed by a slab of cetacean (even more ironically, the car was acquired in a "Get a Whale of a Deal" promotion through a local dealer). Miraculously, no one was killed or seriously injured, although attacks of severe nausea ran rampart.

Strangely enough, the sound of a half-ton of exploding dynamite did little to attract the seagulls.

Much of the whale carcass remained behind, and the OHD finally buried it on the site.

Twenty years later, Dave Berry did a humorous article on the topic of exploding whales. This article, as well as videos of the event, can be found on the world-renowned Exploding Whale website.

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