11-12-2024 - On This Day in Insane History

On November 12, 1970, the world witnessed one of the most peculiar wildlife management operations in history: the Great Oregon Whale Explosion. Off the coast of Florence, Oregon, a 45-foot, 8-ton sperm whale carcass had washed ashore, and local highway officials decided that dynamite was the most expedient method of disposal.

Highway engineer George Thornton, with the confidence of a man who clearly had never detonated a marine mammal before, calculated what he believed would be an appropriate amount of dynamite to obliterate the whale. His plan was to use a half-ton of explosives, believing the blast would scatter the remains and allow scavengers to clean up the rest.

What actually happened was a catastrophic miscalculation. When the dynamite detonated, massive chunks of blubber rained down over a quarter-mile radius, crushing a nearby car and sending bewildered spectators diving for cover. Pieces of whale meat pelted the landscape like grotesque, blubbery meteorites.

Local news coverage captured the absurdity, with reporter Paul Linnman famously noting that "the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds." The event became an instant local legend and later a viral sensation in the pre-internet era, proving that sometimes human intervention is best left unintervened.