The story of the miniature tripod then:
In August 2005, there was a TPF Meet-Up in the UK, in a little place called Saffron Walden, and my sister and I wanted to fly over to meet with some TPFers. At Hamburg-Lübeck airport, our things got x-rayed BEFORE we went up to the check-in counter, and they saw those tiny tripods in our respective camera bags which we wanted to take on board. My sister had one and so did I. And we were told we could not bring those on board, they had to go into the check luggage. For security reasons. Thankfully we could still take them out and put them into our check luggage. Else I guess they'd have made us throw them away...
I've called my tiny tripod "the weapon" ever since...