mothernaturenetwork:

Exploding whale: In 1970, a dead sperm whale washed ashore in Florence, Ore., offering beach-goers an oddity that quickly turned into a giant, smelly problem. Local authorities weren’t sure what to do with the carcass, finally settling on a plan to use dynamite to blast it into small pieces, making it edible for birds and crabs.
 
Officials buried a half ton of explosives under the whale, moved everyone back a quarter mile, and pushed down the plunger. The explosion rocked the beach and sent chunks of rotting whale flying onto the crowd of spectators. There were no major injuries, although a nearby car was smashed and most of the people watching were left covered in nasty whale bits.

10 of the world’s most famous whales

After searching through the whale tags of tumblr, I finally found something worth commenting on considering the majority of the tags were photos of Iphone messages of whale faces. I live near the beach and actually have seen a whale washed ashore, but have never heard about anyone blow up a dead body of a whale. I guess if the smell was that bad and it was taking to long for other animals to decompose the whale, another solution would have to be found.

The authorities probably should have taken a little more thought and gave warning to this explosion. I would have been pretty upset if my car was ruined to do a whale explosion. 1970 is a pretty long time ago and now we have better solutions for taking care of these problems. I’m glad because I don’t ever want to be covered in ‘nasty whale bits.’