The 1st is fairly common here in sorta rural places... "That outdoor CFL festoon string worked fine last summer" *switch on* *PSSS POW FSSSSHHHHHH POW POW BANG BANG darkness*. 5 min later, 5 new CFLs, and life goes on so it seems.....

Add to that the strings that are tied in a way that let the lamps (whether CFL or Incandescent) to swing and smash against walls etc in the wind. Those make some mean sparking when the stem wires of the smashed lamp hit the metal pole or gutter etc

I once asked an electrician I know what the stupidest thing he'd seen and/or done was, and he told me that there was this apprentice wiring this apartment building attic, with like 8 light bulbs up there in ceramic JB sockets, and he wired them in series, so they were quite dim, with 120v across like 8 bulbs!

Zarlog, chances are you shorted the ballast, and vaporized the varnish. It's toast, man.

Another one-
I was at petco  getting some stuff for my (very large) aquarium. After going back out, I noticed one of the MH wall can lights had a bluer color than the others. So I went to investigate. I looked straight at it-and realized that the lamp had a broken outer bulb. Thankfully I have glasses, which probably filtered out most of the UV, but I have heard that unprotected arctubes can cause serious eye and skin damage. So yep, I was pretty scared for a while. Why dont they still make self-extinguishing lamps?

Self-extinguishing lamps should be mandatory if you ask me.  I've heard many stories of people getting skin and eye damage in school gyms from MH lamps broken by basketballs, etc.  One in particular I remember reading about happened during a teacher workshop all day in a school gymnasium.  One teacher started having sight issues, while driving home on the freeway!  I think the state of Oregon has banned those "Type R" MV/MH lights from school gyms in their state (And maybe other public places but I would think gyms would be the most likely to get a broken lamp) and mandated they be removed...albeit probably replaced with those junky T8 or T5 electronic "highbay" fixtures. 

What about this? https://instagram.com/p/8JLksapMSs/

  

Is that NM-B cable (Romex)?

Installing an 8 foot slimline in a bedroom and apparently not mounting it well enough...laying in bed one night (Last night before posting this actually!) drifting off to sleep and  CRASH! Glass everywhere, the ends of the lamps across the room, both sections of channel cover flew off (Amazing, they were secured very well!), one lampholder bracket popped out, one endplate bent up, the other lampholder bracket dented, glass umpteen feet away from the points of impact, and part of this right over a bed! Thankfully I wasn't hurt, but between my heart rate and cleaning up the mercury and phoshor mess I probably took a good year off my life LOL. 

I ended up throwing out a bunch of bedding, a pile of dirty laundry, and even ripping the carpet out! (Just to be safe).   

You did all that just for broken fluorescents? I laid back on two f32t8s on my bed and I just took the sheets off and aired them out outside and then fanned the room and ventilated the house.

I would have at least washed the sheets.

Oh yeah I did! Not so much for mercury (That's what most people are scared of) but for microscopic pieces of broken glass covered with phosphor.).  I wouldn't want to be laying in bed and get cut by a sliver, or step out of bed on the carpet (Actually, I had Astroturf in there, serving the purpose of wall-to-wall carpet barefoot and cut myself.  I'm even leery about re-using the matress but I'm going to since I don't have anything to replace it with.  

F32T8s aren't too bad, but a pair of F96T12s...that's a LOT of glass to clean up! Full-mercury lamps too, thankfully they were 60w energy savers...

I posted a pic and will post more of the aftermath, then you might change your mind about ripping the carpet out LOL.  

The ones I had split down the center evenly where I laid on them (thankfully a cheep throw pillow was between me and them). I was upset because there my second pair of the 8000k sylvania lamps.

Microscopic pieces of glass are microscopic. What stays after you can't see it, after you shaked the thing off the window, after you smacked it down on the clothesline.... Must be at dust level. That won't hurt you



I walk barefoot allways in the house (stone floors) and garden, sometimes outside too. Never tried to "avoid" a place where i broke a lamp, after brooming/mopping it once, and never had any injury related to that

And i had my own share of stupid story....

In one of our school trips, we came in the evening to a fieldschool motel for the night. In the dining room there was a wheeled dish cart standing in the way. I pushed it and "stood on my arms" off its handle for a short ride (like kids do with shopping carts) - expected to ride it like that for a few feet and stop

But i did not expect how lightweight it was, so pushed it a bit too hard... The thing slipped forward and its far end lifted off the floor, then it went a bit off course and hit a column of the building - and "shaked" some of the glassware out. Ended in a big scatter of broken glass, and kids yelling "congratulations" around (sorta common custom here)....

And i was barefoot there too. Only tried to avoid the big pieces when i walked off / helped clean it up. Still no injury. Though the glass there had not break to as little pieces as a lamp does, so it was fairly safe

Found what may be a good one this morning:

One building at my university has about three recessed can fixtures in a hallway (more for decorative lighting than actual utility lighting).  They weren't lit.  One has a sticker on it clearly saying '277 volts'.  Looks like somebody had stuck in 120v CFLs.  No clue how well they may or may not have performed but the plastic bases looked quite yellowed and the spiral tubes themselves were darkened to sort of a grayish color.  It then occurred to me there may well be another couple like that, I've always thought the spirals were 3500K, but maybe overdriven 2700K?!

During my annual vacation with my father at Ein-Gev (19-22.9.2016), I touched one of the COB LEDs at one of the two indirect LED fixtures we had in our room, and got a small electric shock from the LED, and it was very hot to tough.