WREN Bowell is 2. At her home in Peasedown St John, Somerset, she was racing to show her parents a picture she had just drawn. She tripped over a stair gate. The pencil she was holding – wince now – entered her eye. The pencil passed though her skull and went 1 1/2in into the frontal lobe of her brain.

Wisely, her parents did not fiddle with the pencil. They called 999. After an operation lasting four hours at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, Wren is recovered.

Medics removed a section of Wren’s skull with the pencil. Plastic plates and biodegradable screws repaired the skull.

Hideous stuff. Add it to the gallery:

Chair leg

Image 13 of 41

HERE’S an image of Shafique el-Fahkri, taken at the Royal Melbourne Hospital where team of five surgeons are preparing to remove a met framed chair leg from his face. Operation over and Mr Fahkri spends a month in hospital. He now has 95 per cent of his sight back. Says he: “I feel all right at the moment, actually, but I am too weak for work.” In Melbourne Magistrates Court, 20-year-old Liam Peart, pleads guilty to a charge of “negligently causing serious injury”.