An Oregon highway engineer infamous for blowing up a dead beached whale with a half-ton dynamite in 1970 has died at the age of 84, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

George Thomas Thornton gained national attention over the exploding sperm whale, the incident was able to endure for decades thanks to a video that showed chunks of whale carcass raining down on spectators and flattening the roof of a car.

"I don't think he was trying to be funny," said Paul Linnman, who hosts a news show on Portland radio KEX and did the 1970 report for KATU television news that became a staple on YouTube. "It's just the way he felt."

The Christian Science Monitor reported on Nov. 12, 1970 Thornton got the call to remove a 45-foot-long sperm whale estimated to weigh 8 tons that washed up near Florence, and had started to stink.

At the time, the state Highway Division had jurisdiction over beaches, Oregon Department of Transportation spokesman Don Hamilton told the Christian Monitor. Thornton was a highly-respected engineer who worked 37 years at the agency, he said.

Thornton had refused to talk about the exploding whale for many years, once remarking that every time he did, "it blew up in my face," the Christian Monitor reported.

Thornton told Ed Shoaps, then a public information officer for ODOT, that the district engineer was going elk hunting and left the job to him.

According to the Christian Monitor, Shoaps said Thornton felt they couldn't haul the whale out to sea because it would wash back up. They couldn't bury it on the beach, because the waves would uncover it. And they couldn't burn it.

So Thornton consulted the Navy and other munitions experts, and was advised to blow it up. His crew set the dynamite on the landward side of the whale, hoping to blow it into the water.

"We all know what happened after that," Shoaps told the Christian Monitor.

"I consider it the first story to go viral on the Internet," he said. "The story persists because it is interesting."