Many years ago family member asked me how to transfer photos from their Symbian phone onto PC. Over the years they have been conditioned to absolutely never plug or unplug anything from the computer while it is turned on. It took quite some time to convince them that USB is designed for hotplugging. But the moment we connect it, computer totally freezes. With egg on my face I think, oh, probably just Windows XP crashed. Power-cycling doesn't help at all though, no POST, no beeps, absolutely nothing. Out of ideas I open the computer case, only to see there's a huge bulge on the chipset...

I have no idea what happened there. Perhaps unlucky short when inserting connector, causing latch-up in the chip? Phone was totally fine after this, I connected it to different PC without issues.