here's an older story (1970) about an exploding whale. this one didn't explode by itself, it was blown up..:

It happened on November 12, 1970. The carcass of a sperm whale had been rotting on the beach just south of Florence, OR for several days. At the time, the Oregon Highway Division (now called the Oregon Department of Transportation) had jurisdiction over beaches and decided to dispose of the whale the same way they would clear a large boulder from a highway construction project. The rest is history.