A Family Blow-up?

Many years ago I moved our young family to the Okanagan.  Being in search of employment, we ended up renting a small farm house a short way out of town, small but adequate for the two of us and our young toddler.
It did not take long before we discovered that we had friends and relatives coming out of the woodwork, all hoping to come and stay with us during the popular tourist season.  How could we say "no" to my wife's parents and four of her younger siblings?  More importantly, where were we going to put them all?
Being a former farmstead, we had some outbuildings; a small garage inhabited by families of black widow spiders, a dirt-floored machine shed, a pump house for the well (small and noisy), and a small cabin that had been used to house pickers back when the farm had been an orchard.
The house had a small third bedroom that we used for storage.  This we cleaned out and used for some of the kids, combined with a tent in the yard, but my spouse's aging parents needed more regal accommodations.  Thus we moved a bed and table and chairs into the cabin, which had a small closet as its only appurtenance.  No electricity, so we equipped it with a couple of coal-oil lamps to lighten the gloom.
The visit went well.
When they departed for home, they left us a gift, one of my brothers-in-law, a twelve year old, to stay with us for a year.  The young lad was mischievous, but fun to have around, and we got on well together.  He quickly made some friends from up and down the road, and they would often use the old cabin as a play house and place to sneak cigarettes.
One day, just as I came home from work, my wife announced that our boarder and friends had something to show me in the cabin.  Upon joining them there, they told me there was a bottle of something on top of the closet, complete with a hand drawn "skull and cross bones" on its label.
I climbed up on the table and looked on the closet top.  There was a bottle towards the back, which I just managed to reach.  Stepping down off the table, I placed the bottle on it.  The hand-made label was faded and worn with age, but I could still easily make out the words "DANGER, NITRO" beneath the piratical symbol.  The bottle was the size and shape of a large bottle of Aspirin, and contained about one ounce of clear, thick liquid.
Immediately after clearing the lads out of the cabin, and banning them from entering until I gave them permission, I phoned the local RCMP and tried to convince them that this was not a hoax!
A short time later we were visited by the police, and after showing them the subject of my concern, they decided to contact CFB Chilliwack and request a bomb disposal unit.
The next day we had the RCMP Sergeant, in his vehicle, and an Air-force officer and a Sergeant in a military car parked in our front yard, plus two more RCMP cruisers blocking off the road in either direction, about a quarter mile on either side of our driveway.
The Air-force Sergeant went to examine the cabin, and returned to ask me if he could blow a hole in the field a couple of hundred yards away.  He then got a padded box, and tongs, and retrieved the bottle, carrying it gingerly up to his designated hole-to-be.  A small brick of plastic explosive, and detonator and wires were laid and strung back to our vantage point.  Upon his command, we took shelter behind the cars, and he detonated the explosive.
There was a loud "woomf", and a sharp "crack" combined with a black and crimson fireball.  A smile of satisfaction appeared on the demolition man's face, and he said to me, "that was definitely nitroglycerine, I could tell by the sound of the "crack'".  You were very lucky it didn't go off when you picked it up, since it becomes more unstable with age, and fumes could have leaked from the cap as well.  You were fortunate it was never near an open flame, or it could have demolished the cabin, and most of your house."
My thoughts immediately went to my in-laws and the coal-oil lamps they had been using!