The folks at Asylum have got a great interview with Oregon journalist Paul Linnman, the man who would 40 years later inadvertently give web surfers the fifth most viewed viral video of all time. The clip dates back to 1970. Linnman was working as a field reporter for ABC affiliate KATU Channel 2 in Portland when he was assigned to cover the Oregon Transportion Department’s removal of a 45-foot sperm whale carcass off a beach in Florence … with dynamite.

Linnman tells Asylum:

We’re hearing this noise around us and we realize it is pieces of whale blubber hitting the ground around us (from) 1,000 yards away. A piece of blubber the size of a fingernail could kill you if it hit you in the right part of the head, so we ran away from the blast scene, down the dune and toward the parking lot. Then we heard a second explosion ahead of us, and we just kept going until we saw what it was: A car had been hit by this coffee-table-size piece of blubber and had its windows flattened all the way down to the seats.

The clip’s continued popularity has allowed for Linnman to write a book , The Exploding Whale and Other Remarkable Stories From the Evening News.

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