Several years ago, I was watching TV in my bedroom when I noticed a weird, crackling sound comming out of the back of my VCR. It sounded something like tztztztztztTZTZtztztztzt. Startled, I unplugged the thing. A couple minutes later, I noticed that my table lamp had this pulsing surge, where the light
was normal for a few a seconds, and would get very bright for a split second, before returning to normal. This was happening with the same rythem as the sound comming out of my VCR. I noticed it was happening all over the house, so I went down to the basement to check the breakers. I heard the same crackling/buzzing sound comming from inside the panel, and I tripped the main at that point. This is when things start to get really weird. When I switched the mains back on, the incadecent light in the basement came on *very* dimly, and the fluorecent shop light flickered in a manner very simaler to so many Star Trek episodes after the Enterprise suffers severe damage. I switched the breaker off, and went back upstairs wondering what to do. Moments later, I hear this extremely loud *boom*, and see the transformer can across the street smoking with it's lid blown off.
It wasn't untill well into the night when the power company came and replaced the thing so we could get our power back.

It was probably lucky that you killed the main when you did. Otherwise, when the transformer blew, you might have fried anything with a computer chip (like the vcr) and possibly anything with a cathode-ray tube (TV picture tube). Like a direct hit by lightning, this could have been too stong a surge for a household surge protector.