Moved out with a few friends to our first place, decided since it had a garden we had to have a firework party. At the time I worked as assistant manager in a shop that sold fireworks, because fireworks are explosives myself and the manager had to get a license to possess them (Not sure how it works in other countries but here it is by weight, the volume of fireworks most people are likely to buy are well within the weight limit they are allowed, but the volume we stocked as a store meant we needed court issued licenses.)

Obviously these licenses were to cover the weight of lots and lots of small works, but being young, stupid and usually drunk, my friends and I realised lots of small fireworks happen to weigh not too differently from a few very big fireworks. So license in hand we took a road trip to a wholesaler and bought a few professional display fireworks.

The firework party was pretty successful for the most part, our pokey little garden was about ten meters across, the warnings on the fireworks said audience must remain 200 meters back... but we figured it was just overly cautious manufacturers not wanting to get sued. We fired off some rockets to many oohs and ahhs from those in attendance, then came the grand finale... I believe it was called 'The Block Buster' it was three roughly one meter high tubes attached to a wooden framework, I toddled of down the garden, propped it up with a few bricks, went to light the fuse only to realise it didn't have one, it had connections to wire an electronic detonator to it.... So I got a cigarette lighter and set fire to the bottom of it, then ran!

The next thing I knew there was a blinding flash and I felt very warm, then got knocked off my feet, I looked up from laying flat on the ground to see everyone else kind of frozen in shock with blackened faces, and my ears were ringing (For about two days).

Fortunately, although God knows how, not a single injury.

TL;DR Made a few seconds of my life look like a Michael Bay movie.