48 Fun Facts About Girl Scout

Who founded the Girl Scouts of the USA?

Juliette Gordon Low was 51 when she started the movement in 1912, and she paid most of its bills out of her own pocket in the early years.

A 1911 meeting with which British war hero inspired the founding of the Girl Scouts a year later?

Robert Baden-Powell had already launched the Boy Scouts. He befriended the Girl Scouts' future founder, who worked with girls' groups in Britain before sailing home to start her own.

In which city did the first Girl Scout troop in the United States meet in 1912?

Savannah, Georgia was the founder's hometown. The house where she was born is now a museum owned by the Girl Scouts, and troops travel from across the country to visit it.

Which sense had the Girl Scouts' founder largely lost by the time she started the movement in 1912?

Hearing: ear injuries in her twenties left her almost totally deaf, yet at 51 she criss-crossed the country recruiting leaders and girls for her new movement.

Which shape is the official emblem of the Girl Scouts?

A trefoil is the Girl Scout emblem, and the shortbread cookies called Trefoils are baked in the very same outline.

What is the highest honour a Girl Scout can earn?

The Gold Award only got that name in 1980, after decades under other titles. It goes to older girls who lead a project that keeps helping their community.

The Girl Scouts belong to a world association that pairs their name with that of which other movement?

Girl Guides is also what the first American troops were called in 1912, before they took the name Girl Scouts a year later.

Which Girl Scout level covers kindergarten and first grade?

Daisies are named for the founder, whom an uncle nicknamed Daisy as a baby; she answered to it for the rest of her life.

Which Girl Scout cookie is baked gluten-free?

Toffee-tastic is certified gluten-free, its production line cleaned and tested between runs, and it is sold only in some parts of the country.

Which Girl Scout level covers girls in grades 11 and 12?

Ambassadors are the newest of the six levels, split off so that Seniors now cover only ninth and tenth grade.

Which school grades do Girl Scout Brownies cover?

Second and third graders are Brownies. At first the Girl Scouts were meant for girls of ten and over, so the Brownie level was added for those still too young to join.

Which Senior programme, running from 1941 to the 1970s, was built around aviation?

In July 1942, 29 troop leaders from 15 states met in Philadelphia for its leadership training.

What did the United States issue in 1948 to honour the founder of the Girl Scouts?

A postage stamp carried her portrait 21 years after her death. She had kept her final illness a secret and gone on working for the movement almost to the end.

In which state is the Onondaga Reservation, where an early Native American troop of Girl Scouts formed in 1921?

New York is where Onondaga girls formed their troop, and a year later girls from the Mexican American community of Houston, Texas, started one of their own.

Our Chalet, a world centre where Girl Scouts can stay, sits in the Alps of which country?

Switzerland's Our Chalet was the very first world centre, open since 1932 beside the ski village of Adelboden, so visiting girls can climb in summer and ski in winter.

What do Girl Scouts call the ceremony that marks a girl's move up to the next level?

Bridging ends with a welcome: girls who have moved up are greeted with the Girl Scout handshake, made with the left hand because it is nearer the heart.

The first known Girl Scout cookie sale took place in 1917 at a high school in Muskogee, in which state?

Oklahoma's Muskogee troop baked the cookies at home and sold them in the school cafeteria; commercial bakeries did not take over the baking until the 1930s.

What festive name did the troop behind the first known Girl Scout cookie sale, in December 1917, go by?

The Mistletoe Troop did the baking themselves and sold the cookies in their high school cafeteria that December.

In 1922 the Girl Scouts' own magazine printed a recipe for which simple cookie, urging troops to bake and sell it?

Sugar cookie recipes like that one, sent in by a Chicago Girl Scout director, kept girls baking at home with their mothers and selling door to door through the 1920s.

What did Girl Scouts sell during World War II, when baking ingredients ran short?

Calendars needed no rationed ingredients. Troops also sold war bonds and tended Victory Gardens while the shortages lasted.

Which city's Girl Scouts were the first to sell commercially baked cookies, in 1934?

Philadelphia's council had sold home-baked cookies from the windows of the city's gas and electric company a year earlier, before turning to a commercial bakery.

ABC Bakers is one of two companies licensed to bake Girl Scout cookies; which is the other?

Little Brownie Bakers and its one rival are all that remain of a crowded field: 29 bakers held licences in the late 1940s, 14 in the 1960s and four by 1978.

Once the baker is paid, who keeps the money from a box of Girl Scout cookies?

The local council and troop keep all of it, paying for camps, trips and projects that the girls in each troop choose for themselves.

Exploremores, a Girl Scout cookie launched in the mid-2020s, takes its flavour from which ice cream?

Rocky road is the model: the sandwich cookie is filled with chocolate, marshmallow and toasted-almond creme, and its name nods to the Girl Scout spirit of exploration.

Why can the same Girl Scout cookie go by two different names?

The bakery decides the name: each council buys from one of two licensed bakers, so the box can read Samoas in one town and Caramel deLites in the next.

Which Girl Scout cookie sandwiches peanut butter between two oatmeal cookies?

Do-si-dos share their name with a square-dance move. The call comes from the French dos-à-dos, 'back to back', which is how the two dancers pass around each other.

Which Girl Scout cookie was added in 2017, a century after the first known cookie sale?

S'mores came out as two quite different cookies under one name: one a chocolate-coated graham square, the other a sandwich cookie with a marshmallow-style filling.

Which girls' organisation, founded two years before the Girl Scouts, turned down a merger with them?

Camp Fire Girls were then the bigger movement and said no. The group later opened its doors to boys and is known today simply as Camp Fire.

Whom did the Girl Scouts' founder phone in 1912 to announce 'we're going to start it tonight'?

Her cousin Nina Pape took the call, in which the founder said she had something for the girls of her hometown, 'and all the world'. Eighteen girls signed up.

Roughly how many boxes of Girl Scout cookies are sold in a normal year?

About 200 million boxes are sold in a season of barely four months, by more than a million girls, none of whom is required to take part.

Beyond raising money, what is the stated aim of the Girl Scout cookie programme?

Improving financial literacy is the point: girls set sales goals, handle the money and decide as a troop how to spend what they earn.

What do Girl Scouts earn for completing tasks and mastering skills?

Badges now reach far beyond camping and first aid: girls can earn them in robotics, cybersecurity and space science.

In the Girl Scout Friendship Circle, what is passed from hand to hand around the ring?

A squeeze travels from hand to hand around the circle, which stands for an unbroken chain of friendship linking girls all over the world.

Which honour did President Obama award the Girl Scouts' founder posthumously in 2012?

Presidential Medal of Freedom: the country's highest civilian award went to her 85 years after her death, to mark the Girl Scouts' 100th birthday.

What was the name of the magazine that the Girl Scouts published for much of the twentieth century?

The American Girl printed the 1922 recipe that set troops baking and selling cookies, a fundraiser the magazine suggested years before any national sale existed.

What was the founder of the Girl Scouts buried in, at her own request, in 1927?

Her Girl Scout uniform had a message from the movement's national officers in its pocket, calling her 'the best Girl Scout of them all'.

Who sets the price of a box of Girl Scout cookies?

Each regional council sets its own price, so the same box can cost more in one town than in the next one over.

The Girl Scout Law ends with a pledge to be what 'to every Girl Scout'?

A sister: the Law has been rewritten several times, but that phrase has been there since the 1913 handbook called a Girl Scout 'a sister to every other Girl Scout'.

Which future first lady was president of the Girl Scouts from 1922 to 1925?

Lou Henry Hoover led the Girl Scouts twice. It was during her second term, in the 1930s, that the leadership approved a national plan to bake and sell cookies.

Girl Scouts' Founder's Day falls on the founder's birthday, which is also which holiday?

Halloween, October 31, is the day she was born in 1860, so Founder's Day parties often come with costumes as well as birthday cake.

Which designer, famous for film title sequences, created the Girl Scouts' 1978 logo?

Saul Bass also designed some of America's best-known corporate logos. His Girl Scout mark was new in 1978, and by the next year it was appearing on the cookie boxes.

What colour vest do Girl Scout Juniors wear?

Green marks the Juniors. Younger girls wear blue and then brown, and the oldest levels all share khaki, so one vest can last from sixth grade to graduation.

The Girl Scout Law opens with a vow to be 'honest and' what?

Fair completes the first line, 'honest and fair'. The 1913 original opened differently: 'A Girl Scout's honor is to be trusted.'

Pax Lodge, a world centre that welcomes visiting Girl Scouts, is in which capital city?

London's Pax Lodge, in Hampstead, opened in 1991 and is the third world centre the city has had: the first welcomed visiting girls back in 1939.

What is the Girl Scout slogan?

Do a good turn daily has been the slogan since 1912; the first handbook asked for 'at least one good turn to somebody every day'. 'Be prepared' is the motto instead.

During World War II, Girl Scouts collected which kitchen waste for the war effort?

Cooking fat was saved in cans and handed in along with scrap metal, part of a war effort that also had troops tending Victory Gardens.

Sally Ride flew first, but which former Girl Scout became the first American woman to walk in space?

Kathryn Sullivan made that spacewalk on her first shuttle mission, and on her second she helped deploy the Hubble Space Telescope.

The three raised fingers of the Girl Scout sign stand for the three parts of what?

The Promise pledges service to God and country, help for other people and life by the Girl Scout Law; members may swap the word 'God' for one that fits their own beliefs.