Each year hundreds of pumpkins make their way to Delaware, where they are used as ammunition in the annual World
Championship Punkin Chunkin. Competitors attempt to "chunk" a pumpkin as far as they can using homemade air-powered machines, centrifugal equipment, and even old-fashioned catapults. The longest throw in 2003 measured 4,434.28 feet (1,351 meters).
(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "The Gift of Gardening," May 1992, National Geographic magazine)
