Ah yes. Not nearly as interesting, but my first encounter with a 20" CRT was in 1998, when some lawyer in the firm I worked at *required* one to be installed and working by the next day (a Saturday).
The thing wasn't delivered till late Friday afternoon, when everyone else had departed for the pub. I managed to lug the thing up to the 14th floor in the lift and then to the lawyer's desk - no trolleys for us desktop support peons. It was no mean feat since my fingertips barely reached the back of the monitor (I'm 5'6" with t-rex arms). Thankfully the lift had hand rails where I could prop the thing while it ascended.
It being a long day and me being desperate for my escape, it took me a few unfortunate minutes to realise that the connector wasn't seating correctly because I had it upside down. I tutted to myself, turned it right way up, reseated it, turned on the power, and was greeted with a vibrant display in lovely shades of green.
So I switched off the power, gingerly pulled off the connector, and to my horror, found I'd mashed one pin completely and two of the others were not looking too great. At that time, a 20" CRT was a good chunk of my annual wage - I think in the order of at least 50%, maybe more - so I felt a bit faint at the sight. I scurried over to our workarea for tools, only to find there was zero in the way of screwdrivers to be found or any other suitably pointy tool. The desktop build guys had all departed after I collected the monitor and I did not have after-hours access to their "workshop".
Necessity being the mother of invention, I located a small knife in the tearoom and with that and a large paper clip, was able to straighten the less-bent pins. The mashed pin took a lot longer to jiggle up, and to my horror, the end of the pin separated completely. Without a pair of needle-nosed pliers, there was no hope that I could get the thing back in.
Once again, another desperate lightbulb moment, and I stuck the pin into the female VGA port on the PC. With some very careful jiggling due to the delicacy of the other previously-bent pins, I eased the connector on. Thankfully I'd managed to get the loose pin into the correct socket on the first go - it was not going to come out again. Even more thankfully, when I switched on the power, the monitor came on in beautiful RGB.
I screwed down the connector with extreme prejudice, left the monitor on with the flying toasters flapping across the screen (this lawyer was bleeding edge with his PC toys on Win 3.11), then beat a hasty retreat to the comforts of the nearest Sam Smith (pub). Blessedly, there were no rumptions when I returned to the office on Monday morning - relief, I was then in the plausible deniability zone. Never heard a peep about any issues with the behemoth for the remainder of the time I worked there.