On a much smaller scale, I was once cooking on a grill at a picnic/fundraiser, and lifted the top of the grill, and saw nothing but a sudden, brief wall of flame all around. I didn't feel a thing, other than a rush of surprise, but seconds afterward someone asked me, "Where did your eyebrows go?"
Sr. Vitelli's story reminds me of a similar one of my own. My ex and I bought a house in 1980. One of its main selling points to us was its modern, well equipped kitchen. It had a six burner stove with two ovens and we were anxious to try it. The day we moved in I went to light the oven, holding a match to the oven's pilot light, but it didn't light. I tried the other oven. Same result. I couldn't figure it out until ALL OF A SUDDEN the oven went on.... we'd never had a self-igniting oven before.
