Earlier this year,  we pointed out an article  that suggested that the Exploding Whale may have been the first example of a viral video. Now the  BBC is reporting  that our beloved Exploding Whale video — which you can watch  right here  — is the fifth most watched viral video on the web! On the whale, they have this to say: A TV news clip from 1970 of an exploding whale – in which giant pieces of whale blubber rained down on people a quarter of a mile away – has been viewed 350 million times and earned its own website. The article says that marketing company  The Viral Factory  has “collated page impression figures from websites such as YouTube” in order to determine how many times several very popular web videos have been viewed. Here’s their ranking of the videos (and estimated number of views): TOP TEN VIRAL VIDEOS Star Wars Kid (900m) Numa Numa (700m) One Night In Paris (400m) Kylie Minogue for Agent Provocateur (360m) The Exploding Whale (350m) John West Salmon Bear Fight (300m)

I recently had the opportunity to visit the  Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, CA. In the main hall is a life-size model of a blue whale, which is believed to be the largest animal to have ever lived on Earth.  According to  Wikipedia , the model is 88 feet long and represents the average size of female blue whales. However, the largest blue whales approach 100 feet long and weigh close to 200 tons!

Just a quick blurb to make sure that the 36th anniversary of Oregon’s Exploding Whale does not go unnoticed. It was on November 12, 1970, that the Oregon Highway Division detonated a half-ton of dynamite around the rotting carcass of a sperm whale… and made history.  The date also marks the first anniversary of our newly designed website, which  we launched a year ago in conjunction with a newspaper column featuring our website . Keep telling your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and anyone else you can think of about the Exploding Whale. As long as they keep visiting, we’ll keep our site up and running.  PS: If you haven’t watched the exploding whale video in a while, you should do so today:  click to play the video .

Oregon’s Exploding Whale was once again mentioned in a  news story about the arrival of a 50-foot whale carcass to the Port of Everett in Washington State .  The advanced state of decay initially made it difficult to identify the type of whale, though experts now believe it was a fin whale. This is the second specimen of this endangered and rarely-seen whale to come ashore in Washington in less than six months. (The carcass of another fin whale washed up on a Washington beach  last May .) As with the last one, researchers believe the whale had been struck by a ship. However, it was also entangled in such a way that it had likely been unable to feed for weeks or possibly months.  The whale was found when dock workers complained of a foul smell coming from under the dock.  Oregon’s Exploding Whale was also referenced:  Whale remains often are treated like gangland snitches – left to decompose on remote beaches, hastily buried, or brought to deep water, weighted down with large cement chu