Throwing Clothes.

By hurling a pair of shoes at President George W. Bush during a December press conference, Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi made his dissatisfaction with the United States’ Middle Eastern policies abundantly clear. Due to the rapid diffusion of media, the fusillade quickly became one of the most infamous episodes of airborne assault by garment. Here are some other occurrences that aren’t as readily available for viewing on Youtube.

1) A dispute over tuber-gathering duties ends in tragedy when Mog Throk flings his loincloth of giant sloth fur at Gurk Trok. The pelt lands in a fire, ruining a perfectly good mammoth confit and necessitating a chilly aeration of the cave that leaves Gurk with frostbitten ears and an even colder heart.

2) To the relief of all, an imminent duel between a pair of temperamental Ostrogoth warriors dissolves into laughter and shared flagons of mead when the second cousin of Theodoric the Great sends an ill-fitting glove skyward while pantomiming the bitch-slap he plans to inflict upon his rival.

3) Algonquin maiden Suffers From Lazy Eye bounces a moccasin off the head of hopeful suitor Jealous Bear after he accuses her of ogling Brawny Shirtless Elk during the opening sing-along of Summer MaizeFest. Their overweight uncle Chuckles With Mirth groans at the sheer predictability of it all.

4) In an early eruption of gym class bullying, 16-year old royal scion Burt IX interrupts an aristocratic game of pig bladder dodgeball by launching his sweaty codpiece at Tyrone III. Generations later, the incident is blamed for the sack of Rome, the collapse of the House of Habsburg, the panini craze, and the decline of interest in pig bladders.

5) Pacifist conquistador Sergio Cardenas inadvertently wipes out 250,000 indigenous South Americans after helpfully tossing a bundle of germ-laden undershirts to an assemblage of needy Peruvian children. “I only wanted to infect them with a deadly strain of joy,” he later mourns in his elegant Castilian tongue.

6) The concentric reflection of the alabaster moon gently shimmers in Lake Akkeshi. A leaping yellow-nosed goby breaks the surface of the water with a splash so soundless it may only have been imagined. Hai, the kami of our ancestors is strong here. Then Kazuki zings Jun in the back of the neck with the knotted end of his cotton obi. Oh, that Kazuki!

7) Abigail Smith is accused of witchcraft after her playfully lobbed bonnet catches a gust of wind and ends up stuck in the branches of a birch tree. Despite being released after only a handful of whippings and a week in the pillory, the vindictive wench renders the town’s livestock barren and blights the prized rhubarb patch, pretty much ruining Pie Week for all.

8) Both uncomfortable to wear and nearly impossible to match with shoes, the throwing-star bowtie proves one of the CIA’s least useful assassination gadgets. After several fruitless attempts to create an ergonomic prototype, US Intelligence agents concede that members of the Nation of Islam are unlikely to cooperate in any plot to take down Nikita Khrushchev anyway.

9) An unidentified man heaves a size 11.5 sandal at a water buffalo. The unidentified man steps on landmine while retrieving the errant footwear. The unidentified man perishes in an explosion of whistling shrapnel and flying body parts. The unidentified water buffalo laughs.

10) Cynthia Braxton, a receptionist at Quality Vacuum Supply, becomes so enraptured by the sweet soul sounds of Marvious “Chester” Malone and the Tallahassee Highwaymen that she slings a pair of size XXXXL panties towards the stage. They parachute into the waiting arms of Sal Morgan, a cagey satin collector and part-time satin dealer who attended the concert for expressly said purpose.

11) After scoring the winning bucket in a semi-pro basketball game between the Alleghany Mercantiles and Williamsport Dunkin’ Monks, Carl Stippleworth strips off his jersey and helicopters it into the crowd. The cunning hand of fate returns it to him twenty years later in the form of a dishrag during his unpaid internship at a local steakhouse/veterinary clinic.

12) Glam-Man, a third-tier superhero who usually concentrates on preventing shoddy millinery, saves Fashion Week from the clutches of Dr. Bulimia and Walmartha by blinding the evildoers with his Flying Gold Lamé Short-Shorts of Gaudiness. The afterparty is deemed a success despite a number of mysteriously lengthy visits to the bathroom by that sinister fiend Cocaine Face.

13) Credit goes in equal measures to the six vodka tonics she sucked down on an empty stomach and the creativity inspired by the stack of singles in Dave Pruitt’s moist palm, but on a rainy night in Jackson Heights, exotic dancer Vanessa “Pixie-Stix” Rialto invents her signature move, “The Love Tornado”: after burying patrons beneath a barrage of lacy unmentionables, she bludgeons them over the head with her prosthetic leg.

14) Mistaking cries of panic for cheers of adoration, amateur magician Zach “The Raven-Maned Sorcerer” Rosen proudly pitches his top hat into the audience mere seconds before he is drenched by a bath of corrosive acid from his bungled “Hydrochloric Dove” illusion. Several skin grafts later, he is able to easily discern between muted gasps of revulsion and muffled coos of pity.

15) Seventeen years of mindless drudgery, abandoned dreams, and smothered individuality conflagrate into an inferno of emotion when accounts payable spreadsheet-monkey Leonid Freel peels off his pen-protector and flips it against his cubicle wall with a resigned sigh. His outburst is captured on surveillance and he is quickly replaced by a two-pound lump of ferrous metal.

16) In an outer-space equivalent of a football spike, Model XLF-24M removes its P483W containment unit and catapults it towards the cloud of debris that hangs where StarCraft 73 once provided refuge for Earth’s surviving humans. Alone inside his escape pod, Prof. Lloyd Kwan deeply regrets bestowing riding lawn mowers with artificial intelligence, nuclear capabilities, and an extreme aversion to cutting grass.