What was the closest you've ever come to dying/death....?

[GliderGuider]

42. 50 years ago when I was 15 I made a gun that exploded when I fired it

It was a rifle-like contraption made of a 1/2" steel pipe barrel that I had blocked at one end with a hinge pin I'd hammered in tight. I sawed a touch-hole into the wall of the pipe to light the powder I'd made. At the last second I moved my head aside from where I'd been sighting down the barrel of the gun.

When I lit it off the steel pipe flowered open and bent in half. That hinge pin went about two inches to the right of my ear, back through the front window of my house 100 feet away, where it left a punched hole in the glass like a .303 round, and ricocheted off the brick wall on the other side of the room about 6 feet from where my father was sitting. It was probably moving at better than 1000 fps. I can still see the perfect round impression the head of the hinge pin made when it hit the wall.

I think I used a little too much powder...

I no longer mess with things that go bang.