> Distilling off diisopropyl alcohol from Calcium hydride under Nitrogen should be a simple experiment - until such time as the needle blocks and a little pressure goes a long way.
>
> Round about 4.30 pm GMT I was working in the fumehood next to Chris Nichols when he applied a heat gun to his short path distillation, resulting in an explosion which set fire to a large quantity of volatile solvent, burning off a decent amount of his fringe and sucking the air out of his lungs. We got it under control pretty quickly, emptying two powder extinguishers into the fumehood and choking everyone with a cloud of white particles.
>
> Meanwhile I can't stop shaking while I type and nearly two hours have passed.
>
> Chris is OK, but everyone got a terrible fright.

Nothing like having an explosion in the chemlab to keep everyone on their toes. Of course, your recent "near-death" experience sounds a lot more exciting than the way I recall my own... Years ago, one of my labmates managed to gas me not once but TWICE in one session with cyanide gas. So I got various symptoms of inhalation, but because we had been stupid enough not to have done the prelab workup (i.e. a listing of all the possible products evolved and their mechanisms), I didn't realize until much later that one of the main reaction products was HCN gas. In other words, removing the reflux column (a water-cooled glass tube that condenses hot gases) from the reaction vessel -- in order to straighten the column up -- was NOT exactly the brightest idea. It might very well have been quite lethal.

Another incident that burns in mind is the time when one of my students dropped a jug of chlorosulfonic acid onto a wet floor. "Explosively corrosive, volatile decomposition" is the key operative phrase there. A thoroughly unpleasant experience with tingling skin, burning lungs, vapour-burning eyeballs, etc. The entire east wing of the ground floor had to be evacuated. I suppose the upside is that everyone became very diligent about safety (gloves, safety glasses, no wearing of contact lenses, etc.)

Wolfspirit