Brush with fate:

Smashed to pieces

Nick Flynn, a clumsy visitor to Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, managed to trip over his shoelaces, fall down a staircase and take a set of 300-year-old Chinese vases with him.

Cleaning up the smithereens took two days and the restoration lasted half a year. Flynn was arrested but let off. The vases are now back on display, while visitors are urged to wear Velcro around the exhibition.