Exploding whale

There have been two documented, notable incidents of exploding whales, as well as some lesser-known ones. The most famous explosion occurred in Florence, Oregon, United States, in 1970, when a dead gray whale was blown up by the Oregon Highway Division in an attempt to dispose of its rotting carcass. This incident became famous when American humorist Dave Barry wrote about it in his newspaper column, and latterly via television footage of the incident that appeared on the Internet. The other well-reported case of an exploding whale was in Taiwan in 2004. In that incident, a buildup of gas inside a decomposing sperm whale caused it to explode while it was being transported for post-mortem examination.

Oregon

In November 1970, a 14 m (45 ft.), eight ton gray whale died as a result of beaching itself near Florence, Oregon. At the time, the Oregon Highway Division (now known as the Oregon Department of Transportation or ODOT) had jurisdiction over beaches and was given the task of removing the whale carcass. After consulting with officials at the United States Navy, they decided that it would be best to remove the whale in the same way they would remove a boulder and, on November 12, they used half a ton of dynamite to detonate the whale. This decision was made because they thought burying the whale would be ineffective, as it would soon be uncovered, and they believed the use of dynamite would cause an explosion that would disintegrate the whale into pieces small enough for scavengers to clear up. The engineer in charge of the operation, George Thornton, was recorded as stating that one set of charges might not be enough and more might be needed. Thornton later explained that he was chosen to remove the whale because the district engineer, Dale Allen, had gone hunting.^{news reporter Paul Linnman. In his voiceover, Linnman joked that "land-lubber newsmen" became "land-blubber newsmen", for "the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds."blubber to land quite some distance away from the beach, resulting in a smashed car. The explosion did not disintegrate most of the whale, which remained on the beach for the Oregon Highway Division workers to clear away.}

At the end of his news story, Paul Linnman noted that "It might be concluded that should a whale ever be washed ashore in Lane County again, those in charge will not only remember what to do, they'll certainly remember what not to do." It was reported in the ODOT's employee newspaper, TranScript, that 41 sperm whales beached nearby in 1979; state parks officials burned and buried them ^{sharks and so become a danger to beach users. On September 30, 2004, an adult Humpback Whale beached itself at Bonza Bay beach in East London, South Africa, and died. In order to sink the whale, authorities towed it out to sea and detonated it from a distance.urban legend. However, it was brought to widespread public attention by popular writer Dave Barry in his Miami Herald column of May 20, 1990, when he reported that he had footage of the event. Sometime later the Oregon State Highway division started to receive calls from the media after a shortened version of the article was distributed on bulletin boards under the title "The Farside Comes To Life In Oregon". However, the piece did not explain that the event had happened approximately 25 year previously and whoever had copied Barry's article neglected to include the authorship of the piece; Dave Barry says that on a fairly regular basis someone forwards him the "authorless" column and suggests he write something about the described incident. Due to these oversights, an article in the ODOT's Transcript notes that}