We study the distribution of the time to explosion for one-dimensional diffusions. We relate this question to the computation of expectations of suitable nonnegative local martingales. Moreover, we characterize the distribution function of the time to explosion as the minimal solution to a certain Cauchy problem for an appropriate parabolic differential equation; this leads to alternative characterizations of Feller's criterion for explosions. We discuss in detail several examples for which To the Memory of Marc Yor. for their insightful remarks that improved the manuscript. We thank Alex Mijatović for raising the issues of strict positivity and full support and for prompting us to think about them (Sects. 4.2 and 4.3, respectively). We are grateful to the referees for their meticulous reading of the paper and their many and incisive suggestions. J.R. acknowledges generous support from the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance, University of Oxford, where a major part of this work was completed. The problem discussed here was suggested to us by Marc Yor, who also gave us generous expert advice on several of its aspects. We dedicate the paper to his memory with deep sorrow at his passing. I.