I remember on a rainy day in high school we played kickball indoors. Someone kicked the ball too high and it went straight into ones of the high-bays. Didn't break the lamp but the fixture was swinging madly. (Can't tell what lamp it was or whether the frame jumped off the dimple (IF it was ED shape.) Another one was that girls were playing volleyball and the ball went into the fluorescent fixture. Broke both lamps. Helped clean up the mess. (The major pieces while someone gets the broom.)

Anyone have a story about near accidental breakage or actual breakage of lighting fixtures or lamps.

one day in middle school i was playing basket ball in the gym..and i aimed the ball a little too high it bounced off the goal and hit a high bay...putting a pretty good ding in the reflector..the vibrations temporarily caused the Metal Halide Lamp inside to shift to a pinkish tone...then the lamp went out.

one day in middle school i was playing basket ball in the gym..and i aimed the ball a little too high it bounced off the goal and hit a high bay...putting a pretty good ding in the reflector..the vibrations temporarily caused the Metal Halide Lamp inside to shift to a pinkish tone...then the lamp went out.

It most likely went back on later.....because I've had tat happen often and they always hot restrike like about 20 min or more....MH take FOREVER to hot restrike!

on time in middle school i kicked a ball so hard that it hit a high bay light (MH) and caused it to change colors then go out.

At elementary school I kicked a soccer ball directly in a high bay. By luck, high bays in the gym had protective screens so it just made a BONG and the light swang for over a minute. No color shift of shut off at all.

once i got burned by a 100 watt incandescent lamp,it left a pretty good blister on me,OUCH!

As some of you may know, I run a hardware store and I hired my friend Mike part-time to be one of my stock people.  On his first day we got a truck of merchandise in and as we were preparing everything to be transported onto the selling floor,  I was helping him load up some dollys with electrical merchandise and light bulbs.  We had to climb ladders to get into the bulk-packed items that came off the truck (they were stacked 8' high) and as he was on the ladder taking a case of incandescent flood lights out of the bulk stack, he somehow lost his balance and dropped the entire case of bulbs on the floor and every single bulb in the case smashed with that tell-tale popping glass-breakage sound.  I looked at him with the most serious face I could manage at the moment and said, "Well, now you're fired.  You haven't even been here two hours and you've already ruined $100 worth of light bulbs."  He thought I was serious and (almost) looked like he was going to cry.  Then, after about 30 seconds, I started laughing at his astonished reaction, and said that sometimes, "stuff" happens!  He has never broken another light bulb since.  (Though I can't say so much for myself!)

The burned out T-8 fluorescent lamps have recently been re-lamped in my science classroom, and one of the fixture's refractor was not latched properly. As a result, today, it opened up on its own during class.

Also, some of those fixtures in that room have dead ballasts, but there are two ballasts in each fixture, one operating the outer two lamps and another operating the center lamp, so those fixtures are still producing light from the other lamp(s). These aforementioned fixtures have a sticky note placed inside, with something like "BAD BALLAST" written on it.

I have one story too. When I was 15 year old. I worked as an part timer in a local shop thats sell electrict stuff. One of my jobs was to replace dead fluorescent lamps in storage room(2X56W T8 preheat shoplight). Ceiling of storage room was very high so I needed to use tall ladders to reach for those fixtures. I did leave lights on during this operation because 1. Otherwise I would not be able to see anything. and 2. after chancing lamp I could knew rightaway that it worked. Well this turn out to be not so bright idea. Operation was going well. but then. when I was about halfway going. I took the old lamp off. slip new one in to base, and began to turn it. BUZZZZ! Bright light and wery loud electric buZZZ. That scared (...) out of me. I almost fell of the ladders. In closer inspection that fixture had bad ballast. Direct shortcircuit. No wonder that tube was almost vaporased.