On this day 45 years ago – and long before YouTube or LiveLeak - the first viral video was recorded.
The year was 1970 and US engineer George Thorton was tasked with a mission: remove a 14m sperm whale that washed ashore in Oregon.
He couldn’t bury it and the carcass was too big to burn.
With all other options exhausted he decided on a course of action that would pave the way for viral videos in the years to come.
“Let’s blow it up, scatter it to the wind and let the crabs and seagulls clean up the mess, ” Thorton reportedly said.
At 3.45pm Thursday, November 12, the button was pushed and the carcass exploded into pink mist and chunks - but the exclusion zone wasn’t quite big enough.
People and cars were covered with falling blubber and guts, and the whole thing was caught on camera.
"It went viral before the internet had the infrastructure to support viral videos," author Andrew David Thaler wrote.
“(At a time) when mailing a six minute clip via USPS was faster than downloading."
Long before there were iPhones, emails and viral clips like ‘Charlie bit my finger’, there were VHS tapes, people sending parcels and one ‘Exploding Whale’.