Do you have pictures of it?

Sadly, I never thought about taking pictures or video of that event at that time.

Ran metal halide white for a minute, then... Kaboom! Part of the sodium was smoldering on the carpet, white hot.

That probably wasn't sodium, it was more likely a piece of the arctube or something.

One fail i remember is about 5 years ago, i got a pack of neon indicator lamps for really cheap and i was bored so i decided to hook one up without a resistor, so i hook it up, turn on the power, and BANG. the leads on the neon lamp melt instantly. To my surprise, the circuit breaker did not trip and the neon lamp still worked for the most part.

One fail i remember is about 5 years ago, i got a pack of neon indicator lamps for really cheap and i was bored so i decided to hook one up without a resistor, so i hook it up, turn on the power, and BANG. the leads on the neon lamp melt instantly. To my surprise, the circuit breaker did not trip and the neon lamp still worked for the most part.

I did that once. It lit its normal orange color for maybe 30 seconds, then turned blue-ish for a couple seconds, then -pop- it was done. LOL

One fail i remember is about 5 years ago, i got a pack of neon indicator lamps for really cheap and i was bored so i decided to hook one up without a resistor, so i hook it up, turn on the power, and BANG. the leads on the neon lamp melt instantly. To my surprise, the circuit breaker did not trip and the neon lamp still worked for the most part.

I did that when I got a new power supply 0-70V the neon went bang and so did the power supply