![Pea shooter 1, Beaubourg, Paris 2010](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Pea_shooter_1%2C_Beaubourg%2C_Paris_2010.jpg)
The peashooter (sometimes spelled pea-shooter or pea shooter) is a toy version of the
blowgun or blowpipe. It is usually a tube that launches its projectiles via blowing. As the name suggests the normal ammunition is
peas (usually dried), though other seeds, fruits, improvised darts, or wadded up paper can also be used. The
P-26 fighter aircraft was nicknamed the shooter of peas because it has no visible armament (it had two machine guns on the floor of the cockpit shooting through the propeller). It did, however, have a long tube
gunsight just forward of the
windscreen
The windshield (North American English) or windscreen (Commonwealth English) of an aircraft, car, bus, motorbike, truck, train, boat or streetcar is the front window, which provides visibility while protecting occupants from the elements. Mo ...
that appeared to be its only armament.
Peashooting
Peashooting (sometimes spelled pea-shooting or pea shooting) is the act of shooting dried
peas out of a tube, a peashooter, by blowing through it. A similar effect can be achieved by using small bits of
paper
Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, rags, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distrib ...
instead of peas. A sport has developed around pea shooting, in which peas are shot into a target, similar to those used for
archery. The target may be made of a soft substance (putty) so that the peas will stick into it or at least make indentations that easily identify the location of the hit. The
World Pea Shooting Championships
The World Pea Shooting Championships have been held annually since 1971 on the second Saturday in July, in the village of Witcham near Ely, Cambridgeshire, Ely in Cambridgeshire, England, and has attracted competitors from as far afield as the USA ...
are held annually in the village of
Witcham
Witcham is a small village near Ely in Cambridgeshire, England.
The village is surrounded by fenland farms and has a village hall and a 13th-century church dedicated to St Martin. It has a pub called the White Horse, which was the winner of t ...
,
UK.
World Pea Shooting Championships
References
External links
*
Toy weapons
Games and sports introduced in 1970
{{toy-stub