Yeah, I know now of the dangers of manganese heptoxide, I didn't however, at age 12-13, if I KNEW the stuff was likely to blow up in a cloud of ozone and acidic fumes in my face at any moment, I probably wouldn't have kept it in a 2l glass bottle
Often, I find, that one of the worst parts of chemistry, is those times where one needs reagents deemed suspicious by the drug-nazi governments, and where one is left waiting for several days, on edge, wondering wether what you get in the mail next is that liter of acetic anhydride you paid £40 for, or a customs McNastygram.
I REALLY hate those sort of situations, even more than physical dangers in the lab, at least you will PROBABLY only cause a lot of pain and disfigurement, or a hospital visit (for which you get yummy painkilers
), rather than the dreaded investigation.
Heh, I remember another incident as a kid now I think back, I used to be big into pyro, of the most obnoxious, teen wannabe "anarchist" sort, forever causing hell, at the time, I had a small arsenal of improvised rockets, and assorted explosive devices (none of which I do any more), and being inexperienced, I had under my bed, one 3 kilogram tub of a mixture of KMnO4 and sucrose, and one large container FULL of a chlorate/sulfur composition that at the time, I liked to fill pipe-bombs with, or empty CO2 canisters.
I had absolutely no idea of what can happen by autocatalysed decomposition of the chlorate into ClO2, from residual acid on the sulfur, which then sets off the resulting entire damned charge, luckily, nothing came of it, but I stored the bucketful of S/NaClO3 for several months, until I eventually misused it, looking back, I am lucky some of the s#*$ in my younger days didn't take off more than just the flesh of part of my hand