Don’t know how old this video is, but I found it EXTREMELY amusing:
http://perp.com/whale/video.html
Why for this in Pit?
It’s ancient, but I’m sure lots of people haven’t seen it. It is a prime example of group stupidity…what the hell did they THINK was going to happen?
Is this the one Dave Barry wrote about? I haven’t seen the video, but his commentary was hilarious!!!
It’s from 1996, so it’s been around a while.
“Hey y’all…watch this!”
Actually, I think that incident took place in 1970.
Off to MPSIMS, forum of exploding mammals.
That was just the coolest thing ever! When I came in to the tread, it was in the Pit but when I left it had been moved! I think I may swoon! Thanks Coldfire.
Yer welcome. Making people swoon is what we do! Well, that, and talking about exploding mammals.
Ah, yes, I remember it well. We were living in Eugene, Oregon at the time, only about an hour away from the beach at Florence. A Eugene station showed the footage and we hooted for minutes. It also appeared in the Eugene daily, The Register-Guard. The reporter, Paul Linnman, is still with KATU. In 1995, on the 25th anniversary of the event, they ran the piece again on their evening news.
In the late 1980s, when I briefly sold insurance, I used to use that story to illustrate “comprehensive” versus “collision” damage to a motor vehicle. Imagine the poor guy calling up his insurance agent to file a claim. “You got hit by a whale? Call back when you’re sober.”
I’ve always thought it remarkably fortunate that this was captured on film for posterity…I mean, how often does anyone get the chance to blow up a whale carcass? If it were to happen 10 times, surely some other, presumably stupidity-free, non-detonating solution would be arrived at 8 or 9 of those times. Plus, it records for the benefit of future generations exatly what not to do in such a case…
Very nifty video.
Can someone give this person sitting at the end of a very narrow pipe some idea of what’s so Og-damned funny about the video?
How did they blow up the whale?
A classic!
You know what’s funny, the same thing happened in Ocean City, Maryland back in the 1920s. I can’t find a cite online, but it’s in one of my Ocean City history books. Yes, I have Ocean City history books. 
Anyway, they did the same thing; they strapped a ton of dynamite onto the whale and blew it to smithereens! My books says that the entire southside of the town smelt horribly for weeks because so many pieces of whale landed on roof tops and stayed there for so long!
LOL!