Jigsaws

Jigsaws were invented in the 15th century by Leonardo Da Vinci when he dropped the first draft of 'the last supper', which he had painted on a piece of slate in characteristic defiance of tradition, on the floor. It shattered into many pieces. Da Vinci abandoned his slate painting exercise, reverting to canvas. His friend Isabella d'Este, however, spent an entertaining evening putting all of the pieces back together and spent the next three or four years pestering Leonardo to make more broken pictures. He initially resisted, correctly believing jigsaws to be a waste of time (he was a genius, after all) but later relented, creating the first modern jigsaws. Scholars generally regard this as marking the onset of Leonardo's senile phase.