The circumstances under which I broke my Palm IIIs are not that spectacular.
Low altitude falls on the carpet did their devastating work.
Back in October '98, I broke the first one after having happily owned one of those early Palm IIIs for two months. In those days, the Palm III was still hard to get in Europe. The device was still usable for a couple of days but programs started working all by themselves. A particular area of the screen was always pushed down whenever I used the stylus somewhere else. So any icon or button in that area would be activated under even the slightest touch.