Fifty years ago, Oregon exploded a whale in a burst that ‘blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds’

On a clear November day in 1970 in Florence, Ore., state highway engineers lit 20 cases of dynamite to blow apart a 45-foot sperm whale carcass that had washed up on the beach and festered for three days.

Unfortunately, the explosion did not go as planned.

The engineers intended for the eight-ton carcass to be thrown into the ocean in pieces. Instead, chunks of flesh flew toward the beachside town and fell from the sky, crushing a car a quarter-mile away and raining down on a crowd who had gathered to watch the pyrotechnics.