Similar story: I went to bloom some dried chillies and black pepper for stir fry. Well, I used too much oil and waited too long so it got too hot. The spices aerosolized instantly, fumigating the kitchen. Then when, I put the meat in hoping to cool the pan down, hot spicy oil started aerosolizing and splattering every which way.

And just the other day: while I was blanching some beef, I noticed that the burner knob was precariously balanced between between OFF and HI, so i nudged it to HI to make sure the water on kept boiling. Halfway through, I noticed that the plastic container I was setting the blanched beef into into was shrinking. Turns out that the knob I pushed to HI was actually for the burner under the cast iron pan that my container was setting on. Thankfully the wet beef kept the plastic cool enough to be just softened and wilty instead of melting to the pan.