Eagle Scouts
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40 free Eagle Scouts trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Eagle Scout is the highest rank in Scouts BSA, and only a small share of the young people who join ever reach it. The path takes years of merit badges, leadership and a service project the candidate must plan and lead, which is why the award still carries weight on college and job applications long after the uniform is put away. This quiz covers the whole story: how the award began, what the requirements ask for, the medal, badge and Palms, and the ceremony at the end. It also tests you on well-known Eagle Scouts, from astronauts and film directors to politicians, business founders and a rock singer. It suits Scouts working toward the rank, parents and leaders planning a ceremony or a meeting-night game, and anyone who earned the badge years ago and wants to see how much they remember. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which US president, raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is the only one to have earned Eagle Scout?
Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford earned the rank in 1927, and when he died about 400 Eagle Scouts lined up as his casket passed in the funeral procession.
Q 02Which Eagle Scout sent his regards to a Scout jamboree in Idaho while flying to the Moon in 1969?
Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong sent the message days before stepping onto the lunar surface, and for many years afterwards he wrote letters congratulating new Eagle Scouts.
Q 03Which Eagle Scout director made a nine-minute Western to earn his Photography merit badge?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg shot The Last Gunfight on 8 mm film, and decades later he helped the Boy Scouts of America develop a merit badge in cinematography.
Q 04Which merit badge minimum, set for Eagle Scout in the 1911 handbook, is still the requirement?
21
21 has been the total for all but six years: a 1972 overhaul of the program raised it to 24, and the original figure returned in 1978.
Q 05Which Eagle Palm color ranks highest, standing for fifteen merit badges beyond the Eagle requirement?
Silver
Silver outranks gold here because the Palms follow the heraldic order of the US military: bronze marks five extra badges and gold marks ten.
Q 06Before which birthday must a Scout complete the Eagle requirements, apart from the final board of review?
18th
The 18th birthday is the cut-off for everything but the board of review, which may be held up to three months later.
Q 07In which rank must a Scout serve actively for at least six months before earning Eagle?
Life
Life is the last stop before Eagle, though it once sat lower: until 1924 it came before Star in the order of ranks.
Q 08Which animal named the top award in the June 1911 Handbook for Boys, before the eagle replaced it?
Wolf
Wolf Scout was the name in print for only two months: the August 1911 edition of the handbook renamed the highest award Eagle Scout.
Q 09Until a 1952 rule set an age limit, which group could earn Eagle Scout alongside teenagers?
Adults
Adults could qualify for the first four decades, which is how the fourth Eagle Scout came to be a 31-year-old Scoutmaster from New York.
Q 10Which Long Island teenager received the very first Eagle Scout medal on Labor Day 1912?
Arthur Eldred
Arthur Eldred had passed his review months earlier but had to wait for the medal's design to be settled; his son and grandson went on to earn the rank too.
Q 11Which British visitor, newly arrived in New York, sat on the first Eagle Scout's board of review in 1912?
Lord Baden-Powell
Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout movement, had landed that same morning, and it is uncertain how he found out the review was taking place that afternoon.
Q 12Which of these is off-limits as the beneficiary of an Eagle Scout service project?
Their own troop
Their own troop is ruled out because a project may not benefit Scouting itself; it has to serve a school, a religious institution or the wider community.
Q 13Which Apollo 13 commander earned the Eagle Scout rank as a boy growing up in Milwaukee?
Jim Lovell
Q 21Eagle Scouts who enlist in the US armed forces may receive which benefit in recognition of the award?
A higher starting rank
A higher starting rank is the reward for enlistees, and the award also counts in a candidate's favor for service academy places and ROTC scholarships.
Q 22The Eagle Scout award kit holds pins for a mother, a father and which third person?
A mentor
A mentor pin lets the new Eagle thank someone who guided the way; it was introduced in 2004 and has changed its finish twice since.
Q 23Which Eagle Scout ran the oil giant ExxonMobil before becoming US secretary of state in 2017?
Rex Tillerson
Jim Lovell went on to chair the National Eagle Scout Association, years after he brought his crippled spacecraft safely back to Earth.
Q 14Which Eagle Scout director stood outside the White House at John F. Kennedy's inauguration on his own 15th birthday?
David Lynch
David Lynch was there with other Boy Scouts, and in later years he often chose to describe himself simply as an Eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana.
Q 15Which Eagle Scout, who earned the rank at twelve, later served three terms as mayor of New York City?
Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg made Eagle while growing up in Medford, Massachusetts, long before he founded the financial data company that carries his name.
Q 16Which Eagle Scout, who read to blind students for his service project, went on to host Dirty Jobs?
Mike Rowe
Mike Rowe cites those reading sessions as one reason he took up narrating, and he has twice spoken to the crowds at a National Scout Jamboree.
Q 17Uniformed leaders who earned Eagle as youths may wear a square knot patch striped in which colors?
Red, white and blue
Red, white and blue has marked grown-up Eagles since 1934, at first as a ribbon bar, which the embroidered knot patch replaced in 1947.
Q 18At which ceremony, also used for lower rank awards, is a new Eagle Scout presented with the medal?
Court of honor
Court of honor is the name of the event, and it comes after the board of review, which is the final requirement for the rank.
Q 19Which merit badge was added back to the list of Eagle-required badges in 2014?
Cooking
Cooking sits among the badges every Eagle must earn with no substitute allowed, alongside First Aid, Camping and Personal Fitness.
Q 20To become an Eagle Scout, a Scout must earn Swimming, Hiking or which third merit badge?
Cycling
Cycling completes the trio, and a Scout who earns more than one of the three can count the extras toward the overall badge total.
Rex Tillerson, whose father was a Boy Scouts executive, also served as the organization's national president from 2010 to 2012.
Q 24Which Eagle Scout led the CIA and the Pentagon before being elected president of the Boy Scouts of America?
Robert Gates
Robert Gates took the Scouting post after leaving the Obama administration, having earlier headed the National Eagle Scout Association.
Q 25Which Supreme Court justice from San Francisco earned Eagle Scout, as did his brother, a federal judge?
Stephen Breyer
Stephen Breyer and his younger brother Charles both reached the rank, and in 2007 the justice received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.
Q 26Which Eagle Scout played for the New York Knicks before becoming a US senator for New Jersey?
Bill Bradley
Bill Bradley, a Rhodes Scholar, joined the Order of the Arrow as a Scout and later ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000.
Q 27Which Eagle Scout biologist, a world authority on ants, won two Pulitzer Prizes for his books?
E. O. Wilson
E. O. Wilson was nature director at his Boy Scout summer camp, and he turned from flies to ants when insect pins ran short during the Second World War.
Q 28Eagle Scout Paul Siple won a nationwide search in 1928 to sail to Antarctica with which polar explorer?
Richard Byrd
Richard Byrd took the 19-year-old south on his ship the City of New York; Siple went on to join six Antarctic expeditions and coin the term wind chill.
Q 29Which Eagle Scout adventurer made the first solo nonstop balloon flight around the world in 2002?
Steve Fossett
Steve Fossett made Eagle at 13 and worked a summer as a ranger at Philmont Scout Ranch; the balloon record came on his sixth attempt.
Q 30Which Texas billionaire, an Eagle Scout after only 13 months, ran for president as an independent in 1992?
Ross Perot
Ross Perot joined the Boy Scouts in his hometown of Texarkana, a few years after taking his first job at the age of eight as a paperboy.