Snowball fight

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A snowball throw in Boston

Four college students from Montclair State University attack their friend during a snowball fight in 2003.

A snowball fight is a physical game often played by young people in which snowballs are thrown with the intention of hitting somebody else. The game is similar to dodgeball, though typically less organized. This activity is typically played during months when there is sufficient snowfall. Due to possibility of mean-spirited children incorporating rocks or ice into their snowballs, snowball fighting is usually prohibited at schools.

The activity is notable for very loose official regulation or constant properties, and so can only loosely be referred to as a game. However, a common snowball fight played for fun will often have these characteristics:

There is crude formation of "teams", usually two groups of opponents throwing at each other.
Snowballs are usually not thrown at the face, but rather at the body.
Those in a fight often do not behave malevolently; a target is usually not viciously assaulted by snowballs.
There is minimal physical contact, aside from perhaps wrestling.
In contrast to other forms of fighting, there is usually no intention of bodily harm.
Construction and use of snow forts is permitted.
Ice balls being made from hard ice rather than soft snow, or the insertion of hard objects such as rocks into snowballs, are considered poor sportsmanship as they can cause an injury.
Although particularly heated battles may devolve into facewashing, or rubbing snow directly into an opponent's face, this is widely frowned upon for more casual affairs.

[edit] Current World Record

3,745 students and alumni of Michigan Technological University along with locals set the World Record for Largest Snowball Fight on February 10, 2006.

During the American Civil War, on January 29, 1863, the largest military snow exchange occurred in the Rappahannock Valley in Northern Virginia. What began as a few hundred men from Texas plotting a friendly fight against their Arkansas camp mates soon escalated into a brawl that involved 9,000 soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia [1].