Apropos of nothing else I’ve ever posted, today I feel compelled to share the most explosive tale from Oregon history. It took place in 1970—before my time—but it occurred in a little beach town where my parents later lived and my father worked in city government.

Florence, Oregon 2011. The cute downtown area, sans whale carcasses.

Thank heavens he wasn’t employed by the City of Florence in November, 1970. At least in this case, the blame is pretty easy to place squarely with the state highway division instead of City Hall, though you might be surprised how rarely that stops complaints from coming in.

A nice rendition of the whole story can be found here. If you just want the highlights, here’s a cartoon version.

Willing to view for yourself the great Oregon coast whale explosion? Here’s unabridged news footage from KATU-TV.

What brought this story to mind was a news item this morning: a forty foot long, rotting aquatic animal corpse has washed ashore in Indonesia. Is it a giant squid? A whale? Experts are taking meat samples (ugh!) and locals are snapping selfies they can show their doctors later when they develop rotting-meat related diseases.

Here’s hoping they elect to clean up the Indonesian carcass with something other than 20 cases of dynamite. Unless, that is, they are looking forward to blobs of blubber raining from the sky.

Still looking for more on this topic? You’re a little sick, but try:

Wikipedia on this, and other, exploding whales

The Exploding Whale site including factual and artistic explorations of the topic