![]() ![]() “It’s just the way he felt.” After 37 years on the job, Thornton retired from the Oregon DOT in 1984 - before the video went viral. When Linnman asked Thornton for an interview years later, he refused, saying “whenever I talk to the media, it blows up in my face.” (Yes, really!) “I don’t think he was trying to be funny,” Linnman said. A few months after the incident, he was promoted to district engineer for the Medford area. He didn’t like it one bit that the video, and thus the story, went viral online. Thornton was deeply embarrassed by the failure to obliterate the whale, especially since he had consulted with the U.S. Yet even then, the video quality was poor, and the posting caption notes it is, “The infamous exploding whale story from KATU News, circa 1970.”Ĭirca 1970?! They don’t know the exact date …when they’re posting it on the anniversary? The Five Ws of news, guys, is Who, What, When, Where, and Why! The Making of a Legend One thing that amuses me: KATU didn’t post the video online until 2019, on the 49th anniversary of the classic tale. Thornton brought in a bulldozer to bury the rest. “It went just exactly right,” highway engineer Thornton said, “except the blast funneled a hole in the sand under the whale” so the whale parts went straight up and out, rather than out to sea as planned. While no one was injured, Linnman reported, “everyone was covered by small particles of dead whale.” And so were the parked cars.Īnd even after all that, a major chunk of the whale was still left next to the crater in the sand dug out by the explosion. On the other hand, “it’s a hell of a note that the only thing you’re really famous for in your entire life is your car was smashed by a flying whale.” “What made it funny was no one got hurt,” he said. In the 25 years that followed, Umenhofer went on TV multiple times to tell the story. They paid him in full, and he used the money to buy another one. Instead of filing a claim with his own insurer, he filed with the state’s insurance company to cover his gold beauty. “My insurance company’s never going to believe this,” said the car’s owner, Walter Umenhofer, who was 38 at the time. The …Uh… Fallout Umenhofer’s whaled Olds. Who could resist? They later published errata noting it was a sperm whale, not a gray, which don’t have teeth. Why there were so many people there to watch: the Eugene Register-Guard gave a day’s notice. A half-ton of dynamite makes for a mighty big boom. A brand new Oldsmobile Regency 98 was creamed by a chunk. “Pieces of meat passed high over our heads,” Linnman said. “The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival” - even though the 75 or so spectators had been moved a quarter-mile away. “The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds,” the poetic reporter deadpanned. Just onnnnnne more case of dynamite to make it an even 1,000 pounds. No, not twenty sticks of dynamite: twenty 50-pound cases were planted by the department’s “demolition experts.” They mostly worked to remove boulders that fell on the highway, not blubbery carcasses from the beach. Highway engineer George Thornton brought in twenty cases of Hercules-brand dynamite. Linnman had been on the job for about three years, and was already an expert at off-the-cuff reporting on camera - back in those days, on 16mm film. Reporter Paul Linnman of Portland’s KATU covered what happened next, accompanied by news cameraman Doug Brazil. The Now-Classic Report KATU’s Paul Linnman begins his report, rotting whale in the background. At the time, the Oregon Highway Division (now the Oregon Department of Transportation) had jurisdiction over the state’s beaches. ![]() But three days later, residents couldn’t stand the smell anymore and demanded the state do something about it. The 45-foot-long, 8-ton sperm whale washed up on a beach near Florence, Ore., on November 9, 1970, and quickly became a local curiosity. This is its story, with a higher resolution video than most have ever seen. The First-Ever Viral Video (which, naturally, was of the “weird news” variety!) was shot a half century ago today.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |