Venceslao Boemo, January, c. 1400.

My colleague Stephen sent along this clipping earlier today, from an 1855 issue of the New York Times.

Nor is this the only recorded instance of snowball-related violence.

January 29, 1863: Confederate troops stationed in the Rappahannock Valley in Northern Virginia begin exchanging friendly snowball fire. This escalates to a nine-thousand-rebel brawl.

This is what happens when you put rocks in your snowballs.

January 12, 1893: Some rambunctious Princeton sophomores engage in a rock-laced snowball fight. This is the result.

The Great Depression: Snowballs (aka snowcones) are known as “hard times sundaes.”

August 17, 1945: Animal Farmis published.

Summer, 1958: My dad (or rather, the boy who will, decades later, become my dad) and his friends decide it will be the coolest thing ever if they freeze snowballs during the winter so they can have a snowball fight in July. First snowball—now pure ice—results in eight-year-old Joel Bernstein taken to the hospital for stitches.

January 7, 2013: A German teacher, hurt in a snowball fight with students, sues the school board and succeeds in getting it classified a work injury.

February 13, 2014: A brother and sister, maybe five and three, are having a snowball fight under my window. She repeatedly screams, “WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD? TO GO TO THE BATHROOM!” He throws a snowball at her face; she falls down, crying.