Several years ago, one old friend of mine said that he testified some CRT imploding, and for one of it he swears that one flying glass crossed very near it's neck...
He mention it when I challenged him: I never seen one imploded this manner; the only ones that I seen are modern ones and only produced the ait leaking sound, like some people mentions here (the ones I breaked like the examples cited here, and some that breaked by some accident). I'm also argued that, if one thing IMPLODES, the object will collapses into itself. But he explained: if one piece of glass is violently sucked to it's innards, it will kicks, sometimes in opposite direction, aka. it will fly away. And some side perhaps simply can shatter away due to physical force modulus.

When the 1st "BIG' CRT's came out ( 30-36" ") this story was going around.
A tot on the left coast was tapping the screen with something & it
imploded, BOOMPH !, sucked him up & killed him. It was said to be
an MGA
Meanwhile in N.J. the same thing hapend but was blamed on a Sharp.
Cant be sure but that was from reliable sources, but probably
urban legend.

When jugs blow they are unpredictable. To de- frag them cover it
with a blanket & break off the little glass teet on the socket.
But that kinda take the fun out of it...... Sound can be awsome
a BOOMPH or DUMPH with shrapnel flying everywhere, or just a hiss.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

I know the front glass of my 34" Panasonic TAU widescreen is quite thick perhaps 3/4" making the set weigh in over 150 lbs but the bell section from what I can see doesn't seem to be any thicker than say a delta-gun 25". This is one CRT I don't want to break.