97 Fun Facts About Camp

The first organised US summer camp is usually credited to a camp founded in 1861 in which state?

Connecticut is where teacher Frederick Gunn marched his pupils to the shore at Milford in 1861 to camp, fish and drill like the Civil War soldiers they expected to become.

Which 1980 horror film sends a group of young counsellors to reopen Camp Crystal Lake?

Friday the 13th has a killer who is not Jason: in the first film it is Mrs. Voorhees, avenging the son she believes drowned at the camp, and he only takes over in the sequels.

Camp Dudley, the oldest continually running US boys' camp, was started in 1885 by a volunteer from which organisation?

The YMCA asked volunteer Sumner Dudley to take some of its boys camping, the trip became a yearly fixture, and the camp took his name after he died in 1897.

Which book series sends its hero to a summer camp called Camp Half-Blood?

Percy Jackson began as bedtime stories: Rick Riordan made them up for his son Haley, who has ADHD and dyslexia, and gave his hero both.

What three things make up a s'more?

Toasted marshmallow, chocolate and graham crackers: the hot marshmallow melts the chocolate and glues the sandwich shut, and the name is just 'some more' said fast.

The original marshmallow sweet was made from which part of the marsh-mallow plant?

The root gave a sticky sap that set the original sweet; candy makers later swapped it out of the recipe, so most modern marshmallows contain none of the plant.

Which animal-derived ingredient gives most modern marshmallows their springy set?

Gelatin, boiled out of animal skin and bones, is why most marshmallows are off the menu for vegetarians, even though the sweet is named after a plant.

Which insect repellent, developed for the US Army in the 1940s, went on sale to the public in 1957?

DEET does not kill mosquitoes: it only repels them, apparently by making it hard for a biting insect to smell the person wearing it.

What is the safest place to build a campfire?

In an established fire ring the ground is already cleared and scorched, so the fire scars no new patch and sits clear of the tents, shrubs and low branches Smokey Bear warns about.

What is the correct way to put out a campfire?

Drown it, stir it and drown it again, then hold a hand over the ashes: Smokey Bear's rule is that a fire too hot to touch is too hot to leave.

In fire-building, what is 'tinder'?

Material thin enough to catch from a spark, such as dry grass or pine needles, burns only briefly, so its job is to light the finger-thick kindling that in turn lights the logs.

Which chemical in poison ivy sap causes the rash?

Urushiol is an oil that clings to clothes, garden tools and pet fur, so people can come out in the rash without ever touching the plant.

Poison ivy leaves grow in clusters of how many leaflets?

Three glossy leaflets on every leaf are the constant, which is why hikers count leaflets: the plant itself can creep along the ground, stand as a shrub or climb as a vine.

Smokey Bear's original 1944 slogan promised that care would prevent what?

9 out of 10 forest fires still matches the campaign's line that people start nearly nine in ten such blazes, which is how its first slogan could promise so much from care alone.

In 2001, Smokey Bear's 'Only you can prevent forest fires' was updated to name what instead?

Wildfires replaced 'forest fires' after a rash of blazes in grassland and other country that is not forest, and to make clear Smokey has no quarrel with planned, prescribed burns.

What was Smokey doing in his first 1944 poster?

Pouring water on a campfire, in jeans and a ranger's hat, was Smokey's debut; the job was open because Disney had lent Bambi to the fire-prevention campaign for only one year.

Which outdoor ethic's seven principles begin 'Plan ahead and prepare'?

Leave No Trace goes well beyond litter: one principle tells hikers to leave rocks, plants and historic objects where they lie, so even a pocketed arrowhead breaks the code.

Which campfire spiritual's title do US politicians use as sarcastic shorthand for unrealistic harmony?

Kum ba yah, usually read as 'come by here', began as a plea for God's help, caught on a wax cylinder from a Georgia man's singing in the 1920s, decades before the folk revival made it a campfire singalong.

Which classic knot makes a fixed, slip-proof loop at a rope's end?

Bowline loops neither slip nor bind under load yet untie easily once it is off, which is why sailors, climbers and rescue teams all use the knot.

Where was the first experimental Scout camp held, in 1907?

Brownsea Island, in Poole Harbour, let Baden-Powell try his ideas on boys from very different social backgrounds before he finished Scouting for Boys, the book that launched the movement.

Camp Fire Girls, founded in 1910, was created as the sister organisation to what?

The Boy Scouts of America had only just launched when some of its own founders set up Camp Fire Girls so that girls had an outdoor movement too; the sister group has taken boys since 1975.

What are the cords called that run from a tent to pegs in the ground to hold it steady?

Guy ropes have nothing to do with men called Guy: the word is an old sailors' term that comes from the French for a guide, because the rope guides and steadies its load.

Which tree's bark did Indigenous builders in North America's northern forests stretch over wooden frames to make light canoes?

Birch bark made a hull light enough to carry over the portages between lakes, which is why the fur trade's voyageurs took up the design wholesale.

Which term for a wasteful project began as the name of a braided leather cord made and worn by Scouts?

Boondoggle turned sour in 1935, when critics learned that New Deal relief money was paying to teach the jobless handicrafts such as braiding leather.

Which mosquitoes bite people?

Every mosquito drinks nectar; only the females have mouthparts built to pierce skin, and that is how diseases move.

Which stage of a mosquito's life comes between the larva and the flying adult?

Pupa: a mosquito spends it in the water without feeding at all, floating at the surface until the winged adult splits the case and flies off.

A Dutch oven used over coals is usually made of what?

Seasoned cast iron pots bake like an oven thanks to two additions: legs that stand the pot over the coals and a rimmed lid that holds more coals on top, so heat comes from above and below.

Which director's 2012 film Moonrise Kingdom follows a 12-year-old Khaki Scout who runs away from Camp Ivanhoe?

Wes Anderson has the boy slip away to meet his pen pal, and with a violent storm bearing down on their New England island, the scoutmaster and half the adults turn out to search.

Which 1990s Nickelodeon series had the Midnight Society telling scary stories around a campfire?

Are You Afraid of the Dark? felt like an all-American camp-out, but the woods were Canadian: the series was filmed mainly in Montreal with a Quebec production company.

Which 2001 cult comedy is set on the last day of camp in 1981?

Wet Hot American Summer came back on Netflix in 2015 as a prequel whose joke was the casting: the original actors, 14 years older, played even younger versions of their characters.

The rash-causing oil in poison ivy is also found in the peel of which tropical fruit?

Mango skin and sap carry the same irritant, so people who react badly to poison ivy are the ones most likely to come out in a rash from handling the fruit.

Which film sends Wednesday and Pugsley to Camp Chippewa, where she is cast as Pocahontas in the Thanksgiving play?

Addams Family Values has Wednesday play along until the performance, then break from the script and lead the camp's outcasts in a revolt that ends with the stage in flames.

Which word, once slang for a rowdy party, have Scouts used for their big gatherings since a 1920 event in London?

Jamboree meant a noisy, boozy spree in American slang decades before Scouting adopted it, so Baden-Powell borrowed the word rather than coining it.

Which lotion, made mostly of zinc oxide, is a classic remedy for the itch of poison ivy?

Calamine owes its famous pink colour to a dash of iron oxide, the compound in rust, mixed into the white zinc oxide that dries out the rash.

Space Camp, where children have trained like astronauts since 1982, is based in which Alabama city?

Huntsville is home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, so the camp at the rocket museum next door could build its week around real astronaut training.

Which singer made her name as Mitchie Torres in Disney Channel's 2008 film Camp Rock?

Demi Lovato's Mitchie can only go to the music camp because her mother takes the job of catering it, which leaves her working kitchen shifts between songs.

Amadou, the tinder Ötzi the Iceman carried, is made from what?

Bracket fungus shaped like a horse's hoof supplies it: the spongy flesh soaks up water so well that anglers have also used it to dry their fishing flies.

Allan Sherman's 1963 hit 'Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh' is a homesick boy's letter from which fictional camp?

Camp Granada is forgiven in the last verse: the rain stops, the swimming and baseball start, and the boy begs his parents to disregard the letter, all to Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours.

Artek, the famous Soviet Young Pioneer camp founded in 1925, sits on which peninsula?

Crimea's Black Sea coast made Artek the Soviet showpiece camp, and in 1983 the American schoolgirl Samantha Smith stayed there as Yuri Andropov's guest after writing to him about nuclear war.

Which bugle call, arranged by Union general Daniel Butterfield in 1862, signals lights-out at many summer camps?

Taps was Butterfield's reworking of an older call, tried out on his own brigade in Virginia; it soon spread through the Union Army and was reportedly taken up by Confederate buglers too.

Which brand of household dye coloured much of the early tie-dye of the 1960s?

Rit was the supermarket dye to hand when the look took off in the late 1960s, after rock stars such as Janis Joplin and John Sebastian, who dyed his own stage clothes, wore it.

Orienteering, the map-and-compass sport, originated in which country?

Sweden gave the sport its name: orientering began as soldiers' map-and-compass training, army garrisons were racing before any civilian event, and English borrowed the Swedish word.

Karl Elsener began making soldiers' knives in 1891 at a business that grew into which company?

Victorinox joins two names: Victoria, the mother who backed Elsener's first workshop, and inox, the trade word for the stainless steel the firm later switched to.

Which comedian had his first starring film role as head counsellor Tripper in the 1979 camp comedy Meatballs?

Bill Murray's turn at cut-price Camp North Star also launched director Ivan Reitman, and the pair went on to make Stripes and Ghostbusters together.

In the 1998 film The Parent Trap, the twins meet at a summer camp in which US state?

Maine is only the story's setting: the Camp Walden scenes, where a prank war lands the twins in the isolation cabin together, were shot at a real camp in California.

Friendship bracelets, a staple of camp craft tables, are a simple form of which craft?

Macramé's plain half-hitch knot builds most of the patterns, and custom says the bracelet is tied on with a wish and worn until it frays and drops off by itself.

The 10,000-year-old Pesse canoe, the oldest known boat, was made from what?

A hollowed log of Scots pine, it was doubted as a boat until 2001, when archaeologists built an exact replica and a canoeist paddled it, answering claims that it was only a feeding trough.

Fireflies, the glowing insects chased around camp on summer evenings, actually belong to which insect group?

Beetles, not flies: fireflies are soft-bodied beetles, and all of them glow as larvae, when the light works as a warning signal to predators.

Which camp field-day contest was an Olympic medal sport from 1900 to 1920?

Tug of war was dropped from the Olympics after 1920, but its own international federation still runs world championships for national teams.

The chirps of which insect can be counted to estimate the air temperature, a rule known as Dolbear's law?

Cricket chirps speed up as the air warms, and physicist Amos Dolbear set the link out in an 1897 article called The Cricket as a Thermometer.

Which star, at the tip of the Little Dipper's handle, can campers use to find north at night?

Polaris lies less than one degree from the north celestial pole, so it holds almost still while the rest of the night sky turns around it.

Which children's novel sends Stanley Yelnats to the desert Camp Green Lake after a wrongful theft conviction?

Holes is named for the pit each inmate must dig every day at Camp Green Lake, a correctional boot camp on a dried-up lake in Texas.

In the swimming-pool tag game Marco Polo, what must the player who is 'it' do while chasing the others?

Keep eyes closed and follow the voices: the chaser hunts by sound alone, as in blind man's buff, a dry-land game dating back to at least the 16th century.

Which nickname do hikers and campers give trail mix, the camp snack of nuts and dried fruit?

Gorp is sometimes said to stand for good old raisins and peanuts, and woodsman Horace Kephart was recommending the mix in a camping guide by the 1910s.

The Frisbee is named after the Frisbie company, whose empty tins college students threw for fun; what did Frisbie bake?

Pies in tins stamped with the company's logo started the campus craze, and in 1957 Wham-O renamed its Pluto Platter after the students' word for them.

In target archery, a classic summer camp activity, what colour is the centre of a standard target face?

Gold marks the two innermost scoring zones, worth nine and ten points, with red, blue, black and white bands spreading out from it.

Which narrow boat, first built by Arctic hunters, is traditionally propelled with a double-bladed paddle?

Kayak means man's boat or hunter's boat, and each one was built by the man who would use it, to fit his own body closely.

The animated prequel Kamp Koral follows which cartoon character as a 10-year-old at an underwater sleepaway camp?

SpongeBob shares the camp with younger versions of the regular characters in this spin-off of the Nickelodeon series created by Stephen Hillenburg.

The animated series Camp Cretaceous, about campers stranded on Isla Nublar, belongs to which film franchise?

Jurassic Park first reached television with this Netflix series, whose six teenagers must fend for themselves when the dinosaurs escape their habitats.

Which real-life band played the pop trio Connect 3 in Disney Channel's 2008 film Camp Rock?

Jonas Brothers Joe, Nick and Kevin all appeared, with Joe as spoiled lead singer Shane Gray, and 8.9 million viewers watched the premiere night.

Which illness, spread by a bite, often begins with an expanding red rash that can look like a bull's-eye?

Lyme disease, carried by ticks, was only recognised in 1975, after a cluster of cases in neighbouring New England towns was first mistaken for juvenile arthritis.

Which succulent plant's gel goes into lotions sold for minor burns, insect bites and windburn?

Aloe vera gel is used in creams for burns, wounds and rashes, yet some people have allergic reactions to it when it is used on skin.

Which folk singer wrote the campfire favourite This Land Is Your Land in 1940 as a reply to God Bless America?

Woody Guthrie had tired of hearing Kate Smith sing the Irving Berlin hit on the radio, and first gave his answer a sarcastic title echoing it.

Which cartoon family's children lead a revolt at the miserable Kamp Krusty in a 1992 season premiere?

The Simpsons opened its fourth season with the episode, in which Bart leads the campers' uprising, and the animators drew on their own camp memories.

Which lake-dwelling rodent slaps its broad, flat tail on the surface to warn others of danger?

Beaver kits have to learn the signal: an adult's tail slap sends the others fleeing to the lodge, while a juvenile's is usually ignored.

The Big Dipper, a stargazing landmark known in Britain as the Plough, is part of which constellation?

Ursa Major is Latin for the greater bear, though its best-known stars have also been pictured as a wagon or a ladle.

On a bottle of sunscreen, an essential in every camp trunk, what do the letters SPF stand for?

Sun protection factor was introduced in 1974 by chemist Franz Greiter, whose Glacier Cream was reputedly inspired by his own sunburn on a mountain climb.

Which portable round tent, insulated with felt, has housed the nomads of Central Asia for thousands of years?

Yurt comes from the Turkic languages, while Mongolians call the same dwelling a ger, and both stand on a circular wooden frame that expands.

Which author's Goosebumps series includes the summer-camp chillers Welcome to Camp Nightmare and Ghost Camp?

R. L. Stine, often called the Stephen King of children's literature, wrote 62 titles in the original series between 1992 and 1997.

Which actor plays fitness entrepreneur Tony Perkis, who takes over Camp Hope in Disney's 1995 comedy Heavyweights?

Ben Stiller played Tony's father as well, while his real parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, appeared as the camp's bankrupt original owners.

Disney Channel's camp comedy Bunk'd, set at Camp Kikiwaka, is a spinoff of which earlier series?

Jessie stars Peyton List and Karan Brar carried their roles over for the early seasons, heading to the camp where their characters' parents had met as teenagers.

Harvestmen, the long-legged creatures nicknamed daddy longlegs in camp cabins, belong to which group of animals?

Arachnids they are, but not spiders: harvestmen have no venom glands at all, despite the legend that makes them the world's most venomous animal.

Cub Scout leaders are called Akela after the leader of the wolf pack in which children's classic?

The Jungle Book gave Cub Scouting much of its vocabulary: the den, the pack and the Grand Howl all come from Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli stories.

The word hammock reached English through Spanish from the Taíno people of which region?

The Caribbean is where Columbus saw islanders sleeping in nets they called hamacas, and by 1597 the Royal Navy was slinging them aboard its ships.

Which bugle call rouses campers and soldiers at the start of the day?

Reveille takes its name from the French for wake up, and US military bases sound it near sunrise, though the exact time varies from base to base.

Which diving bird's wailing night call, often compared to a wolf's howl, echoes across northern lakes in summer?

Common loon calls also include a yodel and a tremolo, and the bird gave Canada's one-dollar coin its nickname, the loonie.

4-H, the youth organisation with the green clover emblem, is named for head, heart, hands and which fourth quality?

Health completes the set, with a white H on each leaf of the clover, and the first 4-H camp had its members sleeping in tents in corn fields.

Which summer camp tradition, launched by a surprise breakout, splits campers into rival teams competing for points?

Color war gives each team a colour of its own, and the surprise breakout is the moment its generals and captains are announced.

Gaga, the dodgeball variant played in a fenced pit at camps, is thought to have been invented in which country?

Israel is the predominant theory, with Israeli counselors said to have brought the game to Jewish summer camps in the United States as early as the 1950s.

What is the term, borrowed from French, for carrying a canoe overland between two bodies of water?

Portage comes from the French porter, to carry, and small canoes are carried upside down on the shoulders, with the centre strut acting as a yoke.

What is the name for a human-made pile of stones raised to mark a hiking trail or a mountain summit?

Cairn building goes back to ancient burial mounds, and an old Scottish Gaelic blessing promises to add a stone to yours.

In archery, what name is given to the feathers or plastic vanes that keep an arrow flying straight?

Fletching in English archery takes one feather from a cock for the outside of the arrow and its other stabilising feathers from a hen.

Which annual meteor shower, debris from comet Swift–Tuttle, lights up summer camp skies when it peaks in mid-August?

Perseids seem to streak out of the constellation Perseus, and Mediterranean folklore calls them the sparks of Saint Lawrence's martyrdom.

The God's eye, a camp craft of yarn woven around crossed sticks, comes from the Huichol people of which country?

Mexico is where the Huichol live, and they call the woven cross a tsikuri, or eye, a symbol of the power to see and understand things unknown.

Alouette, the Quebecois children's singalong, is commonly thought to be about plucking the feathers of which bird?

Lark it is, and one scholar suggests the bird earns its plucking as the first to sing each morning, waking sleepers who would rather not be woken.

Which cowboy singalong, a campfire standard that began as an 1870s poem, is the official state song of Kansas?

Home on the Range began as verses by homesteader Brewster Higley, whose small cabin is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Which British Army officer, defender of Mafeking, wrote Scouting for Boys in 1908 and founded the Scout movement?

Robert Baden-Powell drew on his army manual Aids to Scouting, and held up Mafeking's young cadets as an example in the first chapter of the new handbook.

Which Canadian animated series parodies Survivor by stranding 22 teenage contestants at the rundown Camp Wawanakwa?

Total Drama Island was written after its creators studied what tweens liked and disliked about reality television, and it grew into a whole franchise.

Which Cheers star plays pampered troop leader Phyllis Nefler in the 1989 comedy Troop Beverly Hills?

Shelley Long plays Phyllis Nefler, who takes charge of her daughter Hannah's unruly Wilderness Girls to stay close to her during a contentious divorce.

Which early-1990s Nickelodeon sitcom followed the campers of Camp Anawanna and was based on its creator's 1986 book?

Salute Your Shorts ran from 1991 to 1992, and its camp's name is a play on a reluctant camper's complaint, I don't want to.

Which outdoor-education organisation opened its first school at Aberdyfi in Wales in 1941?

Outward Bound takes its name from the nautical term for a ship leaving safe harbour, and Lawrence Holt started it with educator Kurt Hahn and money from the Blue Funnel Line.

In rock climbing, what is the term for managing the rope so that a falling climber does not fall far?

Belaying works through friction on the rope, so a belayer can hold a climber's entire weight with relatively little force.

Which junior section of the Guides was first called the Rosebuds, until its young members complained about the name?

Brownies were first organised in 1914 for children too young to be Guides, and took their new name from an 1870 story by Juliana Horatia Ewing.

Which quick bread of North America's Indigenous peoples can be toasted over a fire wrapped around a green stick?

Bannock dough is usually just flour, baking powder, sugar, lard and water or milk, and it can equally be fried in fat or baked in an oven.

The dreamcatcher, a willow hoop strung with a web and a popular camp craft, originated with which Indigenous people?

Ojibwe legend credits the Spider Woman, Asibikaashi, and mothers and grandmothers wove the webs as protective charms for infants.

On a canoe, what is the name for the reinforced top edge of the hull, to which the thwarts are fixed?

Gunwale is pronounced gunnel, and the word began as the gun wale, a band of planking that once supported the guns on a sailing warship.

In the camp game capture the flag, where is a tagged player often held until a teammate sets them free?

Jail is only one house rule: a tagged player may instead be frozen in place, sent back to their own territory or made to join the other team.