The point of the trash was that nothing happened until you emptied it. And the OS was loaded into memory so you could eject the OS disk so it wasn’t actively using those files. I don’t think even dragging System to the trash and emptying it would have done anything except prevent you from booting with that System disk.
First image I could find of the desktop and there is computer icons right there.
If dragging one of those to wastebasket at the bottom right crashed the computer, it would fit the description of the event.
Ngl that’d be hilarious if that was basically a GUI for “rm -rf /” LOL
The point of the trash was that nothing happened until you emptied it. And the OS was loaded into memory so you could eject the OS disk so it wasn’t actively using those files. I don’t think even dragging System to the trash and emptying it would have done anything except prevent you from booting with that System disk.