Early on in my &#x27;take things apart for fun&#x27; youth, I knew that capacitors held a charge long after power was removed. So when disassembling a camera with built in flash, I popped off the small board holding the 330V capacitor and thought it would be a great idea to discharge it using the end of my needle nose pliers—for the tiny capacitors I&#x27;d done this to before, it might&#x27;ve caused a tiny spark, but nothing more.<p>Well, I learned a valuable lesson that day; even relatively harmless camera flash capacitors can pack quite a charge days after a battery&#x27;s been removed!<p>The giant spark made me jump back and fall over my chair, and my pliers still have two nice molten burn marks where it touched the contacts. I&#x27;m just glad the pliers had rubber handles!<p>I&#x27;m much more cautious around capacitors these days.