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The Exploding Whale remastered: 50th anniversary of legendary Oregon event
- webmaven 6y agoUnsurprising, perhaps, that such a Whale of a Tale has inspired several songs. The best of those I can find online is 'The Exploding Whale Song' by Dan Tanz[0], but my all time favorite is Kay Shapero's 'Blubber'[1]. [0] https://youtu.be/cR3JcMblV0o https://youtu.be/cR3JcMblV0o [1] Lyrics only, unfortunately: http://www.kayshapero.net/kaysongs.htm#Blubber http://www.kayshapero.net/kaysongs.htm#Blubber
- Anon4Now 6y agoIt also seems to be the inspiration for the end of the Aussie movie Swinging Safari (2018), one of my favorite quirky movies in the last few years.
- webmaven 6y ago> It also seems to be the inspiration for the end of the Aussie movie Swinging Safari (2018), one of my favorite quirky movies in the last few years. I'll check that out. Thanks for the recommendation!
- jtbayly 6y agoThat's remastered? They didn't bother touching the audio at all. Too bad.
- roywiggins 6y agoIt's a 4K scan of the original film, a substantial improvement over the extremely 1970s broadcast quality video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuaSY0cMK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuaSY0cMK8
- Markoff 6y agowhy was the quality so low? even back in 70s broadcasts had better quality than this
- ddlatham 6y agoOne difference I noticed from my memory of watching it 20 years ago is in the original video there was a delay between the visual of the explosion and the audio, which makes sense because of the distance. In this version, they appear to have synced them up.
- phkahler 6y agoAnd I recall a distinctive red in a large portion of the stuff blasted upward. Did they remove the blood in the remaster?
- roywiggins 6y agoKATU's YouTube channel has the original-quality version also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuaSY0cMK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuaSY0cMK8 The color balance is totally different. The remastered blast is not nearly so red, but then, neither is the entire rest of the video.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ceph_ 6y agoDirect link to the video without the shitty local news site: https://youtu.be/V6CLumsir34 https://youtu.be/V6CLumsir34 Side rant: Their ad-tracking cookie opt-out is the epitome of a dark design pattern. It took over 2 minutes to run. Including saying "done" in a pop out and the only leaving a cancel button for another 15 seconds. There's absolutely zero reason it should take even 1/10th of that time, other than purposefully bad UX.
- danso 6y agoKATU, this local news site, are the ones who not only produced the original segment, but 50 years later, worked with the historical society to restore and digitally remaster the original film. Their article contains context and retrospective commentary. edit: to be clear, just explaining why I submitted the link rather than the Youtube link. I don't endorse dark patterned ad code, though I've tried opening the link in a couple of incognito browsers and didn't run into any issues.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- interestica 6y agoThe KATU video seems to be limited to 360p max for me. The YouTube link is the remastered quality that the article seems to be describing.
- danso 6y agoLooks like I ended up being in the wrong then. This morning when I read it, the article embedded the high-res Youtube video (which you could also click to view directly on Youtube) at the bottom of the article. Looks like that at some point today, they've removed the Youtube embed for their own player: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fkatu.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fthe-exploding-whale-50th-anniversary-of-legendary-oregon-event&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fkatu.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fthe-exploding-whale-50th-anniversary-of-legendary-oregon-event http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...
- delibes 6y agoAh. Memories of downloading a 320x256 mpeg of this in the 90s :)
- tonystubblebine 6y agoExactly. This video is one of my first great Internet memories and I had a saved copy on my computer for years.
- buggeryorkshire 6y agoYup, RealVideo represent!
- mads 6y agoBuffering...
- flomo 6y agoMaybe the first internet viral video? I think I got it on Gopher.
- m23khan 6y agoI wonder if Twitter's fail whale was inspired by this event.
- geonic 6y agoDoes anyone know why they decided to blow up the whale? I mean, the consequences should have been obvious to anyone. Where did they expect the pieces to go?
- LeoPanthera 6y agoPerhaps the assumption was that many small pieces would be easier to clean up than one big piece. And that the very small pieces would be removed by other animals, or the weather. Apparently they vastly overestimated how much explosive to use, resulting in the now infamous consequences.
- roywiggins 6y agoAccording to the article: "The decision to blow up the whale came from the Oregon Department of Transportation and George Thornton. According to Linnman, Thornton had consulted with the United State Navy, which had done things like this in the past. The general consensus from all involved after the explosion was that not enough dynamite was used."
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoThe original call must have been an interesting conversation. Credit must be due just for getting through switchboard to someone who could give a professional opinion.
- tantalor 6y ago> overestimated Don't you mean underestimated?
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago>Apparently they vastly overestimated how much explosive to use, I disagree. Had they over-estimated there would have simply been pink mist and a bad smell.
- ForHackernews 6y agoI think the idea was that they'd blast it into tiny pieces that crabs and birds could easily dispose of. Obviously it didn't work out that way.
- lando2319 6y agoDoes anyone know what the current official solution is for a smelly whale carcass stuck on a beach? Seems like hauling it a few miles offshore would do the trick, but who knows it might wash back.
- dan_quixote 6y agoHow? I image that some kind of net could be made to attach to a tug and haul out to sea, but such a thing would have to be custom made to handle a 50 ton whale on sand.
- justin66 6y ago> hauling it a few miles offshore 1. Where are you going to put the crane? It's a beach. 2. Where are you going to put the ship or tugboat? It's a beach. I don't know the solution to beached whale disposal either. I just assume that it's really, really gross.
- evan_ 6y agoYou wouldn't need a crane. Lay out nylon straps on the beach, push or roll it onto the straps with an end loader, secure the straps around it and push it the rest of the way into the water. Once it's in the water and floating you can pull it from a boat 50 meters away if you need to.
- pugworthy 6y agoMarine salvage operations can do it. In fact about 21 years ago, a 650 foot ship (the New Carissa) grounded on the beach about 50 miles south of the whale location. It broke apart, but the salvors were able to float and tow a 440 foot section back out to sea to sink it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Carissa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Carissa
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ouid 6y agoI'm paraphrasing here, but "we think it will work, but the only problem is we don't know how much dynamite to use" strikes me as the statement of a man who was offered a job that he would, under no circumstances, say no to, including the particular circumstance where he has no idea how to do that job. Can't say I would behave much differently in that situation, though.
- chris_wot 6y agoI wrote the original Wikipedia article, for which I received the Oddball Barnstar.
- svat 6y agoWikipedia has an article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_whale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_whale The 1970 event remained little-known until in 1990 Dave Barry wrote about it[1], and it became really well-known thanks to the internet in 1993 or so when (part of) this article[2] “went viral” on bulletin boards. The engineer in charge of the explosion, George Thornton, insisted that the operation was an overall success, and got promoted after this event [3]: > "I said to my supervisors, usually when something happens like this, the person ends up getting promoted," Thornton added. "Sure enough, about six months later, I got promoted to Medford." I see some debate about whether the amount of explosive used was too much or too little; apparently (thanks to following one of the citations from Wikipedia) it was both: > Umenhofer had received explosives training during his World War II service and what he saw on the beach that day made him very, very nervous. He knew project manager George Thornton was not going to get the results he wanted — he either needed a lot less dynamite, so that the whale would just be pushed out to sea, or a whole lot more, so that it would be torn into tiny pieces. Umenhofer told the Springfield paper he tried to warn Thornton but was blown off. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1990/05/20/thar-she-blows/8f6bc076-3843-4653-99d0-a50df88eabaf/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/19... [2]: https://www.theexplodingwhale.com/evidence/resources/dave-barry-article https://www.theexplodingwhale.com/evidence/resources/dave-ba... [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20110717092953/http://tafkac.org/animals/exploding.whale/son_of_blubber.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110717092953/http://tafkac.org...
- 205guy 6y agotl;dr from the video itself: "the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds." I'd forgotten the commentary by the reporter.
- ajnin 6y agoA cult classic. This whole thing looks like something out of a cartoon. I especially love the shot of the cart with boxes of dynamite haphazardly thrown together and someone's leg resting on top of it.
- wolfhumble 6y agoFrom the Wikipedia article about the event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_whale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_whale "A military veteran with explosives training who happened to be in the area warned that the planned twenty cases of dynamite was far too much, and that 20 sticks (8.4 lb or 3.8 kg) would have sufficed, but his advice went unheeded. . . . The explosives-expert veteran's brand-new automobile, purchased during a "Get a Whale of a Deal" promotion in a nearby city, was flattened by a chunk of falling blubber." The irony . . .
- amayne 6y agoWalt Umenhofer, the military veteran mentioned, was a friend of my father’s. Walt also owned a drivable tank. No joke.
- wolfhumble 6y agoInteresting! :-) Also hope his insurance covered the damage from the falling whale blubber. Quite unique car damage! :-)
- neilv 6y agoStarting around 42 seconds in, the video briefly sounds a little like Alice's Restaurant. Which album apparently was released only 3 years earlier.
- superkuh 6y agoThis video was a huge part of my early internet and computing experience around ~1996 as a low resolution quicktime. Seeing it in high quality, seeing people's faces, it's surreal. It's also a lot more gory than in low resolution.