1. Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, is an Eagle Scout. When he said, “The Eagle has landed,” he wasn’t kidding. In 1969, Armstrong became the first Eagle Scout to be portrayed on a U.S. postage stamp— called “The Man on the Moon.”
2. The Invention merit badge (1911–1918) required the candidate to obtain a patent.
3. Boys’ Life magazine, which goes to 1.1 million Scouts each month, was started by an 18-year-old Scout, Joseph Lane, in 1911. A year later, the Boy Scouts of America bought the magazine for $6,100—about $1 per subscriber.
4. James E. West was the BSA’s first Chief Scout Executive. When he took the position in 1911, he agreed to serve six months. At his retirement in 1943, he was given the title of Chief Scout.
5. The BSA is the second-largest Scouting organization in the world. The largest is in Indonesia.
6. One of Scouting’s most popular traditions, patch trading, has bloomed into a full-fledged hobby. Some rare patches are worth thousands of dollars.
7. For all but two years from 1925 to 1976, illustrator Norman Rockwell illustrated the annual Brown &
Bigelow Boy Scout calendar—for free.
8. Former Congressmen Alan Simpson and Norman Mineta served together from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. They met as Boy Scouts during World War II, when Simpson’s troop from Cody, Wyoming, visited the internment camp where Mineta and his Japanese immigrant parents were being held. The two became—and have remained—close friends and political allies.
9. The first Eagle Scout to earn all available merit badges was Leon Wallace in 1922.
10. In May 1964, 29 of American’s 30 astronauts visited Philmont for a two-week training trip to learn
geological mapping and seismographic studies in preparation for the Apollo programs.
11. Three important Eagle Scouts all have names beginning with “A.” The first Eagle Scout is Arthur Eldred (1912) of Long Island, New York; the 1 millionth Eagle (1982) is Alexander Holsinger of Normal, Illinois; and the 2 millionth Eagle (2009) is Anthony Thomas of Lakeville, Minnesota.
12. Scouts collected more than 65 million containers of food during the first Scouting for Food drive in 1988.
13. The Cub Scout sign (the index and middle fingers extended in a V shape) symbolizes the ears of an alert wolf. It replaced the Indian “how” sign, which looked too much like the Nazi salute.
14. The BSA sells 2.3 million merit badges—one for each person in the state of Utah—every year.
15. After eating candy when he had promised not to, a repentant Howard Hughes returned his Buckskin Badge to Daniel Carter Beard with a note that read, “With love, from Howard.”
16. By the BSA’s centennial in February 2010, more than 1.2 billion Boys’ Life magazines will have been printed.
17. At age 12, Seattle Mariners Chairman and CEO Howard Lincoln posed for Norman Rockwell’s painting The Scoutmaster.
18. On February 8, 1910, William D. Boyce incorporated the Boy Scouts of America. He personally donated $1,000 per month to keep the organization afloat—on the condition that boys of all races and creeds be admitted.
19. In 1920, the BSA sent 301 Scouts to the inaugural world Scout jamboree in England, where they joined Scouts from 33 other countries. The American Scouts represented all 48 states plus the territory of Hawaii.
20. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt requested the Boy Scouts’ service in collecting 1.8 million items of clothing, household furnishings, foodstuffs, and supplies for victims of the Great Depression.
21. After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaiian Scouts set up first-aid stations and emergency kitchens, helped evacuate civilians, served as messengers, and manned 58 air-raid sirens around Honolulu.
22. During a three-month drive in the spring of 1942, Scouts collected 318,000 tons of paper for the war effort.
23. In a nationwide nonpartisan get-out-the-vote campaign in 1956, Scouts distributed more than a million posters and 36 million Liberty Bell doorknob hangers.
24. In 1954, the BSA conducted a National Conservation Good Turn, distributing 3.6 million conservation posters. In parks, rural areas, and wilderness areas, Scouts planted 6.2 million trees, and built and placed 55,000 bird nesting boxes.
25. Scouts collected more than 1 million tons of litter on Scouting Keep America Beautiful Day in 1971.
