I can't believe it's been 50 years since a beached whale carcass was exploded so memorably in Florence, Oregon...I'll never forget hearing the stories of the incident and thinking it was nothing more than an outlandish urban legend, until the footage of it showed up on the Internet sometime in my college years. For the occasion, the local station KATU has remastered its 50-year-old footage to capture the flying blubber in full glory. For those of you who have no idea what on earth I'm talking about...some cetacean combustion for your consideration: https://katu.com/news/local/the-exp..._GdYMoYqlTIjdp_-WC9VTSZZqumvbLVKzPwvPoAUy2Qoo
I'm thinking about the guy who's Cadi convertible was destroyed how he explained it to his insurance. "So your car was destroyed by a piece of flying blubber.."
Never heard of this story before. Read the OP, headline and thought the whale exploded by itself and not with the help of humans lol. Warning: NSF...W? L? Spoiler
My dad and grandmother had a similar story from when they blew up the falls here in "Marble" Falls (granite actually) to build Lake MF when he was a kid. Town comes out to watch from a distance, whoever was in charge used waaaay too much dynamite, and he remembered her grabbing him by the arm and dragging him at full speed as rocks rain down all over the place. Nothing got hurt but a few cars. I understand why they had to do it, but it's a damn shame. I've only seen b&w photos, but man it looked absolutely beautiful. They did the same thing with Granite Mountain, which was our version of Enchanted Rock, but they decided to quarry it (that's where the rock for the state capitol came from).
I love the dry, Ron Burgundy-ish delivery of the reporter. "And the seagulls who were supposed to clean things up were nowhere in sight. Either scared away by the explosion or kept away by the smell. That really didn't matter. The remaining chunks were of such a size that no respectable seagull would attempt to tackle anyway."
The whole writing and delivery is just brilliant. My favorite part, bar none, is when he gets alliterative and says, “the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds...”
