Exploding Whale Reporter Looks Back

Oregon journalist Paul Linnman was 23 years old in 1970 when KATU in Portland flew him to Florence to cover the removal of a beached whale. Officials had decided to get rid of the carcass by blowing it up with dynamite. Almost 40 years later, Linnmann looks back at that fateful day.

“We’re hearing this noise around us and we realize it is pieces of whale blubber hitting the ground around us (from) 1,000 yards away. A piece of blubber the size of a fingernail could kill you if it hit you in the right part of the head, so we ran away from the blast scene, down the dune and toward the parking lot. Then we heard a second explosion ahead of us, and we just kept going until we saw what it was: A car had been hit by this coffee-table-size piece of blubber and had its windows flattened all the way down to the seats.”

The video taken that day is now the fifth most-viewed internet video of all time. Linnman said not a day goes by that someone doesn’t mention the story to him. Link -via Buzzfeed

Previously at Neatorama: The Infamous Exploding Whale.