That's beyond magic words can explain
Indeed - the opposite is usually true, especially when you
need to get lucky..
When I was about 17 I had a Z80 based computer that I'd build from a kit. A "Nascom 2" for those with long enough memories.
Anyway I'd somehow been invited to a "personal computer demonstration" that the local council had organised. You have to remember this was in the late 70's so "personal computers" were pretty novel although the father of a friend of mine brought his Exidy Sorcerer - which we though extremely grown up and professional; I digress.
One feature of the Nascom was that the RS232 interface was next to the keyboard interface - both anonymous headers, both the same number of pins and - of course - no keying or anything like that. The important difference was that the RS232 header had 12v on it - somewhat lethal to TTL.
I was late and in my hurry guess what - you got it keyboard in the wrong place and one of the a 7400 on the PCB getting rather warm as it headed off to the keyboard in the sky. Sadly it was
not as robust as the aforementioned 555 and was as dead as a dodo when the keyboard was plugged in correctly.
In the end a sprint to Tandy(== Radio Shack in it's UK guise) and a borrowed soldering iron saved the day. That was when I learned that jamming a screwdriver under a 14 pin DIP and levering upward hard, then desoldering the individual pins was a valid technique when you're in a hurry!
I was always a bit more careful after that (still managed my fair share of mis-pluggings though).