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Happy Exploding Whale Day! [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2025-11-12  

On Thursday, November 12, 1970, the deadliest tropical cyclone on record struck Bangladesh, the Cleveland Cavaliers won their first game, and a sperm whale was found, quite dead and very heavy, on the beach in Florence, Oregon. Engineers with the state Department of Transportation thought they might remove it with 20 cases of dynamite—a classic mistake. The explosion, filmed by a team from Portland's KATU news, did not vaporize the beast. Instead, it rained blubber and gore over the whole area, splattering onlookers, damaging vehicles and leaving most of the whale exactly where it was.

The comically revolting spectacle, narrated drolly by KATU's Paul Linnman ("the humor of the situation gave way to a run for a survival") lay dormant for many years. Humorist Dave Barry kept the flame through the fallow 1990s, but it wasn't until the age of web video that the whale enjoyed a more metaphorical explosion. In 2020, KATU pulled the reel and scanned the original footage in high definition. The incident became so famous that, last year, the town announced that Nov. 12 would henceforth be celebrated as Exploding Whale Day in honor of the poor whale. Celebrations were already in full swing in Monday, reports Oregon Live.

On Monday night, Florence Mayor Rob Ward, standing before a small crowd at Exploding Whale Memorial Park, flanked by two people dressed in whale costumes — one dead, the other smiling — officially declared November 2024 "the month to memorialize the exploding whale." It wasn't that long ago that an Exploding Whale Day seemed like a wild idea, a fever dream born from a viral video pulled out of the depths of Oregon history, but in Florence the event has become a full-fledged holiday, this year expanded into a weeklong celebration capped off by a big commemoration on Sunday.

A clever way to get folks to an Oregon beach town in winter.

Previously:

• Exploding Whale Memorial Park opens near site where that beached whale was blown up in 1970

• Exploding whale film gloriously restored in 4K

• Happy 'Oregon exploded a whale' day

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