What Have I just Watched In The First 16 Seconds Of This Clip?

it is the Mercury-Redstone 1 Launch failure (MR-1),

a number of amazing things happened in the lunch, and yes it did launch, 4" (10 centimeters), into the air before settling back on terra firma again, luck was on NASA’s side – the wind was gentle, and the rocket stayed safely upright, but what just happened? from the article,

 'the rocket engines fired, but then stopped again very quickly. What followed were several seemingly random events. The first thing to happen was the escape tower disappearing in a cloud of smoke, followed by the release of the recovery parachute that was designed to carry the Mercury capsule safely back to Earth. You will notice that the parachute did not inflate. This is hardly surprising, as the capsule was sat motionless on its launch pad, everything then fell silent but the potential for disaster was still high. Here was a rocket, full of fuel, powered by internal batteries and packed with explosive charges',

what more could possibly got wrong? As it happens nothing, for a full look at what happens next and why just 2 plugs brought this multi million dollar rocket to a halt have a look here, an interesting read, particularly about designing the correct components from the get go.