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:

Good morning, Baltimore

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IRELA Gradinaru, 37, arrived at the clinic in Arad, western Romania, with a can of hairspray stuffed up her rectum. Mirandolina Prisca, a doctor at the clinic, tells us: “We had X-rays done to localise the object and then we carried out the operation. The patient was fine after it. She was very embarrassed. She was clearly in a lot of pain, however it got there.”