First they thought it was an old tree stump. Then they thought it was a cyst from a large marine animal. Eventually, they realized that they’d stumbled upon a 32-pound chunk of ambergris that could be worth in excess of $300,000! And they found it on a beach in western South Australia.

No explosions or man-made screw-ups to laugh at this time. No, unfortunately, this is just the sad story of a 5-ton northern bottle-nosed whale that somehow found itself swimming up the Thames River in England. From the river’s banks, people watched in awe as the 18-foot creature swam through towns and cities. As it became [...]

Register-Guard columnist Bob Welch is perhaps the Exploding Whale’s biggest fan (besides yours truly, of course). So it should come as no surprise that he couldn’t resist including one final reference to the whale in his last column of 2005 in which he recounted a list of the best quotes from the year. Bob selected [...]