.:How Did the Sport of Paintball Originate?:.

So far I've heard 2 different stories:

Story 1

Taken from the Greenham Common leaflet:

May 2nd 1985, 7.35 am. 4 lumberjacks, start to mark trees to be felled with a new innovation, a gun that fires water soluble paintballs.

May 2nd 1985, 7.36 am. 4 lumberjacks, bored with shooting trees, discover that it's lots of fun to shoot each other with the paintball guns and proceed to have the time of their lives.

Story 2

As I understand it, it started with a few cattle farmers in America who got bored with marking their cattle by hand (by paint) so they developed a marker which could be used to fire a plastic ball that contained paint at their cattle. This plastic ball would then split on impact and mark the cattle with the enclosed paint. This form of marking was both faster and easier to carry out than the more conventional method of one man and a paintbrush.

One day the farmers got bored and started shooting each other with these Paintguns and before they knew it - Paintball had arisen!

I believe the 1st story to be the true one.