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The term exploding whale primarily refers to an event at Florence, Oregon in November 1970, when a dead sperm whale (reported to be a gray whale) was blown up by the Oregon Highway Division in an attempt to dispose of its rotting carcass. The explosion threw whale flesh over 800ft away. This incident became famous in the United States when American humorist Dave Barry wrote about it in his newspaper column after viewing a videotape of television footage of the explosion. The event became well-known internationally a few decades later when the same footage circulated on the Internet. It was also parodied in the 2007 movie Reno 911!: Miami.There have also been examples of spontaneously exploding whales. The most widely reported example was in Taiwan in 2004, when the buildup of gas inside a decomposing sperm whale caused it to explode in a crowded urban area while it was being transported for a post-mortem examination.OregonEventOn November 9, 1970, a 45ft long, 8short ton sperm whale beached itself at Florence on the central Oregon Coast. At the time, Oregon beaches were under the jurisdiction of the state's Highway Division which, after consulting with the United States Navy, decided to remove the whale in the same way as they would a boulderusing dynamiteassuming that the resulting pieces would be small enough for scavengers to clear up.The engineer in charge of the operation told an interviewer that he wasn't sure how much dynamite would be needed, explaining that he was chosen to remove the whale because his supervisor had gone hunting. A charge of half a ton of dynamite was selected. A military veteran with explosives training who happened to be in the area warned that the planned twenty cases of dynamite was far too much20 sticks would have sufficedbut his advice went unheeded.