2010 will mark the 40th anniversary of one of the Internet’s oldest memes: That Video Where They Blow Up a Beached Whale. To mark this momentous occasion, Asylum recently interviewed Paul Linnman, the TV reporter who recorded the footage that went on to become the the fifth-most-viewed viral video of all time.

“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 footage and Linnman’s report made the evening news and eventually found its way into the national media, something that only earned him $90 extra bucks and $110 for Brazil “because he had a better union than I did apparently.”

Asylum.com: Exploding Whale Video Reporter Looks Back Four Decades Later