Well I suppose my pot explosion deserves a bit more credit (credit for stupidity).
Pot's may be easy to kill in that sense, but you didn't compensate for the 'dakta factor' - i.e the pot was shorted across a metal surface. That metal surface was my computer. The supply was my computers 12v rail..
I killed my first uC just recently. Hooked up the wrong pins to the sensor on an MSP430 and sent 12V through it. Probably would have been fine if I figured it out right away, but I let it sit for a while trying to figure out what the problem was.
Nah, the pin in question was the PGD which is right next to VDD.
On Vregs, it was dark and I managed to hook up my board (undioded) to a 12v Pb battery wrong way round. The reg was smoking, and on correct power up very dodgy. The PIC was fine