The Exploding Whale

The story

Oregon’s beaches were then the job of the State Highway Division, and the engineer in charge decided to blow the whale up, expecting the pieces to be small enough for gulls and other scavengers. On 12 November 1970 the crew set off the charge in front of about 75 people. Blubber rained down on spectators and cars, one chunk flattened the roof of a car more than a quarter of a mile away, and nobody was seriously hurt.

A KATU-TV crew from Portland filmed it, and the reporter noted that the gulls never came. Twenty years later the humour columnist Dave Barry wrote about the tape in his Miami Herald column of 20 May 1990. Copies of that column spread over electronic bulletin boards without saying the blast was decades old, and in 1994 reporters phoned Oregon’s transport department thinking it had just happened.

Why it matters

It is one of the first clips passed around online as a joke, years before YouTube, which is why it is often called the first viral video. It also set a pattern later viral videos repeat: an old clip turns up again without its date, and people take it for new, or for fake.

Where it is now

Florence opened Exploding Whale Memorial Park in 2020 and holds an Exploding Whale Day there each year, a 4K remaster made for the 50th anniversary keeps the clip going round, and Oregon now buries beached whales instead.