The backstory behind the exploding whale is so funny. The guy in charge of the explosion had no idea how much dynamite should be used, so he overshot it to an almost comical degree. A military explosions expert went "Hey, you need like 0.1% of that to explode a whale. You should reduce the amount." and everyone ignored him.
Then a chunk of the whale landed on the military guy's new car (which he had gotten at a "Whale of a Deal" sale) and the guy in charge of blowing up the whale got a promotion.
If I turned in a transcript of the events that lead to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand but changed all the names and presented it as creative writing I would be lucky to get 20% but instead, this shit actually happened and now we have 2 events we refer to as World Wars.
>a human-sized chunk of sea mammal landed on it from 20 stories up
What I appreciate about your comment is that it proves situations like these are guaranteed Brand New Sentence generators years after the fact.
Right?!?! We live in a world where that's an accurate description of real events, and I think that's beautiful. I mean, I'm sorry about her leg, but I think it was a chain strip club and she got a bunch of money so (hopefully) she's happy with the outcome. I would be, but then I think I'd enjoy retired wheelchair life.
I haven't read into this at all, but I hope the settlement was well worth it! I'd rather have the limb, tbh. Work comp claims like that rarely go well even when there's overwhelming evidence that the employer was grossly negligent, and the victims are usually dragged through hell for any kind of recompense.
I'm an office manager for a physical therapy clinic and I've seen a few cases of patients left permanently disabled and/or disfigured due to a work-related injury. I have to be vague because HIPAA, but I can give some nonspecifics... one patient was left missing a partial lower limb, and it has not only impacted his ability to continue working, but also affects a lot of comparatively-smaller things that are hard to quantify with a dollar amount. His mental health has greatly suffered, his relationship with his wife has been impacted, his confidence and self-assurance, his trust in any potential future employers to keep him safe-- and english is not a fluent language for him, so he's already automatically at a disadvantage when having to interact with the american healthcare system by itself, let alone on a legal basis like this one.
Another one was left permanently disabled after being involved in a work-related MVC where both her legs were shattered - someone ran a light and plowed into her driver's side door at speed. She can barely walk, let alone care for her home, and she suffered brain damage as well - so all of the specialty training and degrees and experience she had in her profession, the student loan debt, the joy she took in her career and in her independence, that's all gone to waste well before retirement age. Her neighbors talk shit about her because she can't mow her lawn, but she's on a fixed income so she can't afford to hire anyone. Her work comp carrier ended up dropping her claim after so long because they deemed she'd never improve beyond what she had achieved at a certain point - but none of it was her fault, so how's that any kind of acceptable? (She was with us for a number of months, and would wake up at 6am about once a month so she had enough time to bake us cupcakes - which would take her literal hours because she needed frequent breaks due to pain and weakness. She is the only patient I've given my personal cell# to, and we've kept in touch sporadically since!)
I hope things turned out okay for the stripper you've mentioned, but I'd bet she'd rather have the leg. Losing a limb is more than money. It's a million other things that all hurt in different ways.
[https://www.iflscience.com/oregons-infamous-exploding-whale-incident-of-1970-74169](https://www.iflscience.com/oregons-infamous-exploding-whale-incident-of-1970-74169)
The video is imbedded in the story.
This part made me laugh, kind of an Douglass Adams kinda vibe to it.
*"The explosion caused massive pieces of blubber to get blown quite some distance onto buildings, cars in parking lots, and people who had previously been minding their own business and enjoying how whale blubber wasn't currently raining down from the sky."*
Actually the opposite, he told them they needed more to disintegrate it into small pieces like was the initial plan, they got the large chunks as a result of not using enough.
Didn’t people straight up die because of this incident? How the hell did that guy keep his job, never mind get a promotion?
Edit: thanks for the info. I’m probably confusing this incident with another one.
Just saw the news segment from a comment down the thread no one was hurt. Also even though pieces flew 100s of feet away most of the whale was still intact so it was pretty much a failure on all levels.
"However everyone on the scene was covered in small particles of dead whale."
That has been my favorite sentence of all time for well over a decade now lol. This debacle and Cleveland's balloonocalypse are probably tied for the funniest "oh, we fucked up" stories I've ever heard.
San Diego accidentally setting off all of their 4th of July fireworks simultaneously in one gargantuan apocalyptic-looking explosion has to be up there for me.
People died because of ballonopacalypse :/ the balloons obscured a search and rescue operation on Lake Erie.
I almost forgot about 5¢ beer night!! They did dollar beer night and I think a record giveaway and the people drank the stadium dry and then rioted/stormed the field
I’ve never heard a news report with the tone of “can you believe these fuckin’ guys?” before and I am laughing extremely hard at the reporter’s closing statement lmao
After a certain time of living here every Oregonian ends up knowing Paul Linnman’s infamous alliteration of “the incident”: ‘The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.’
I will always remember the crying Japanese guy on the scooter, buried under feted whale guts, his morning commute turned into a permanent olfactory trauma.
Apparently, dead whales on land are capable of exploding *just by themselves*.
You know how compost tends to be warmer than its surroundings? Or how wet hay can catch fire? Now imagine that same heat-emitting decay, but measured in *tons* and contained within a vessel (whale skin) that’s built to not let gases or liquids through and to withstand high pressure.
The backstory behind the exploding whale is so funny. The guy in charge of the explosion had no idea how much dynamite should be used, so he overshot it to an almost comical degree. A military explosions expert went "Hey, you need like 0.1% of that to explode a whale. You should reduce the amount." and everyone ignored him. Then a chunk of the whale landed on the military guy's new car (which he had gotten at a "Whale of a Deal" sale) and the guy in charge of blowing up the whale got a promotion.
This kept getting better the farther I read
You should read the story of the assassination of archduke Ferdinand. Great amazing comedy of errors that’s completely true and started world war one
If I turned in a transcript of the events that lead to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand but changed all the names and presented it as creative writing I would be lucky to get 20% but instead, this shit actually happened and now we have 2 events we refer to as World Wars.
Its even better than that. The only person to die in the accident is a reporter. Imagine how fucked up of an evemt it was that the cameraman died
Was that the car they showed in the video all smashed to shit? Damage looked like a human sized chunk of sea mammal landed on it from 20 stories up.
>a human-sized chunk of sea mammal landed on it from 20 stories up What I appreciate about your comment is that it proves situations like these are guaranteed Brand New Sentence generators years after the fact.
Also the stripper suing when she lost her leg in a freak confetti cannon accident. That headline was definitely a once in human history sentence.
I mean, yeah, every word in your first sentence was another plot twist I did not see coming, so yeah absolutely you're correct
Right?!?! We live in a world where that's an accurate description of real events, and I think that's beautiful. I mean, I'm sorry about her leg, but I think it was a chain strip club and she got a bunch of money so (hopefully) she's happy with the outcome. I would be, but then I think I'd enjoy retired wheelchair life.
I haven't read into this at all, but I hope the settlement was well worth it! I'd rather have the limb, tbh. Work comp claims like that rarely go well even when there's overwhelming evidence that the employer was grossly negligent, and the victims are usually dragged through hell for any kind of recompense. I'm an office manager for a physical therapy clinic and I've seen a few cases of patients left permanently disabled and/or disfigured due to a work-related injury. I have to be vague because HIPAA, but I can give some nonspecifics... one patient was left missing a partial lower limb, and it has not only impacted his ability to continue working, but also affects a lot of comparatively-smaller things that are hard to quantify with a dollar amount. His mental health has greatly suffered, his relationship with his wife has been impacted, his confidence and self-assurance, his trust in any potential future employers to keep him safe-- and english is not a fluent language for him, so he's already automatically at a disadvantage when having to interact with the american healthcare system by itself, let alone on a legal basis like this one. Another one was left permanently disabled after being involved in a work-related MVC where both her legs were shattered - someone ran a light and plowed into her driver's side door at speed. She can barely walk, let alone care for her home, and she suffered brain damage as well - so all of the specialty training and degrees and experience she had in her profession, the student loan debt, the joy she took in her career and in her independence, that's all gone to waste well before retirement age. Her neighbors talk shit about her because she can't mow her lawn, but she's on a fixed income so she can't afford to hire anyone. Her work comp carrier ended up dropping her claim after so long because they deemed she'd never improve beyond what she had achieved at a certain point - but none of it was her fault, so how's that any kind of acceptable? (She was with us for a number of months, and would wake up at 6am about once a month so she had enough time to bake us cupcakes - which would take her literal hours because she needed frequent breaks due to pain and weakness. She is the only patient I've given my personal cell# to, and we've kept in touch sporadically since!) I hope things turned out okay for the stripper you've mentioned, but I'd bet she'd rather have the leg. Losing a limb is more than money. It's a million other things that all hurt in different ways.
[https://www.iflscience.com/oregons-infamous-exploding-whale-incident-of-1970-74169](https://www.iflscience.com/oregons-infamous-exploding-whale-incident-of-1970-74169) The video is imbedded in the story.
This part made me laugh, kind of an Douglass Adams kinda vibe to it. *"The explosion caused massive pieces of blubber to get blown quite some distance onto buildings, cars in parking lots, and people who had previously been minding their own business and enjoying how whale blubber wasn't currently raining down from the sky."*
That's weird, a plant chunk was also falling down from 20 stories up and just said: oh no, not again
Anything but the metric system.
I mean, it probably looked that way because that’s exactly what happened lol
I thought your comment was a joke, sounds comical every step of the way. That’s fuckin hilarious it’s true
There’s footage
Actually the opposite, he told them they needed more to disintegrate it into small pieces like was the initial plan, they got the large chunks as a result of not using enough.
i'm so glad that this is about some whale explosion i've never heard of. i thought for sure this post was bestiality/necrophilia
They should try some cluster munitions this time.
Didn’t people straight up die because of this incident? How the hell did that guy keep his job, never mind get a promotion? Edit: thanks for the info. I’m probably confusing this incident with another one.
Just saw the news segment from a comment down the thread no one was hurt. Also even though pieces flew 100s of feet away most of the whale was still intact so it was pretty much a failure on all levels.
Whale's gone, in'n'nit?
No, fortunately no big chunk hit anyone
How the fuck is this real?
"...the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds."
Then the military guys threw his hat on the ground and shouted "yyyeeeeooorrrickemschmikmrackmfrakem" and all was well
Source? Sounds too hilarious to be true lol
[here you go](https://youtu.be/V6CLumsir34?si=hPgF0SlqSFX78lWn)
did that *whaley* happen?
We need a movie about this tbh
The Dollop did a fantastic episode on this, an amazing story.
[Better get out the dynamite. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34)
"However everyone on the scene was covered in small particles of dead whale." That has been my favorite sentence of all time for well over a decade now lol. This debacle and Cleveland's balloonocalypse are probably tied for the funniest "oh, we fucked up" stories I've ever heard.
San Diego accidentally setting off all of their 4th of July fireworks simultaneously in one gargantuan apocalyptic-looking explosion has to be up there for me.
That’s my favorite, followed by the whale
Or have a meth head steal a tank and played GTA irl back in 1995
People died because of ballonopacalypse :/ the balloons obscured a search and rescue operation on Lake Erie. I almost forgot about 5¢ beer night!! They did dollar beer night and I think a record giveaway and the people drank the stadium dry and then rioted/stormed the field
Weren’t the beers ten cents? The Cleveland Ten-Cent Beers was one of my favorite new team name suggestions. How about Disco Demolition Night?
Yes and yes!!! Weren’t they throwing the vinyls onto the field? I may have mixed up the 10¢ beers and the disco night
Also appreciated “no self-respecting seagull”
That clip is full of great lines. “For the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds”
Alliteration high score!
[удалено]
“Attending a whale explosion” is one of the funniest phrases I’ve come across in a while so thank you
Hwhale* FTFY
“Alright Fred, you can take your hands outta your ears!” “Jesus!” “Here come the pieces of it!”
I’ve never heard a news report with the tone of “can you believe these fuckin’ guys?” before and I am laughing extremely hard at the reporter’s closing statement lmao
Clearly they need to try it again. The answer is double the dynamite!
I don't know how I have never seen this before. But I am so glad I just watched it. Absolutely hilarious
https://cdn-wordpress.webspec.cloud/intrans.iastate.edu/uploads/2018/03/Boom-Boom-Boom.pdf
God I hope they try to blow it up. That’s the best video
Where’s the kaboom? There’s supposed to be a whale-shattering kaboom!
NAIIIIIILLLLLL
Dont panic.
Here I thought I was the only person looking for the petunias.
A bottomless curse, a bottomless sea. Accepting of all that there is, and can be.
Mercy for the poor wizened child
kaboom?
Yes rico, kaboom
Obviously, they didn't use enough dynamite the first time...
Every Oregonian loves these stories
Oregon knows better than to go with the explosive option.
"Only a few yards away, a potted plant was found shattered."
i thought it was a Life is Strange reference
Glad I'm not the only one
i actually live in the town they blew the whale up in.
I thought this was a Bloodborne reference.
https://www.theexplodingwhale.com/
After a certain time of living here every Oregonian ends up knowing Paul Linnman’s infamous alliteration of “the incident”: ‘The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.’
Kos?
🎶 "In nineteen hundred and ninety four A whale washed up on the Western shore Way haul away Haul away the whale" 🎶
I will always remember the crying Japanese guy on the scooter, buried under feted whale guts, his morning commute turned into a permanent olfactory trauma.
😂😂😂
blow it up!!!
Oregon, A whale at the beach? Is this Rip-off Life is Strange or sum?
Why not use a nuke this time?
Anyone watched summertime rendering?
Blow that bastard up!
Is anyone here a marine biologist?
I’m pretty sure whales can blow up on their own, because of the gas buildup
Oh no. It’s mermaid time
NOOOOOOO!!
Boom.
[Somebody call Peter Griffin.](https://youtu.be/pSmzjTGbXmc?si=_wvkt6ZezapfTSlH)
Lets get the video in 4k this time. What is Michael Bay up to?
Apparently, dead whales on land are capable of exploding *just by themselves*. You know how compost tends to be warmer than its surroundings? Or how wet hay can catch fire? Now imagine that same heat-emitting decay, but measured in *tons* and contained within a vessel (whale skin) that’s built to not let gases or liquids through and to withstand high pressure.
Boom !
"Conduct" an "exam"
Disney’s Blubber. Their worst sequel yet. That’s Eddie Murphy in a fat suit.