How the minke whale got its name

Philip Hoare writing in issue 99 of Granta:

[Baloenoptera acutorostrata‘s] common name, as the whale-watch naturalists delight in telling their audiences, comes from a Norwegian whaler, Meincke, who misidentified it as a much larger (and more valuable) fin whale, and was ribbed by his shipmates for his mistake.

I love stuff like that.