CAMBRIDGE, England -- A visitor to a museum tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway, and fell into a display of centuries-old Chinese vases, shattering them into ''very small pieces," officials said yesterday.
The three Qing dynasty vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, had been donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum in the university city of Cambridge in 1948. They sat on the window sill beside the staircase for 40 years.
''We are glad that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed," museum director Duncan Robinson said.
