On March 12, 1912, in Savannah, Georgia, a 51-year-old woman named Juliette Gordon Low picked up the telephone and called her cousin. "Come right over!" she said. "I've got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we're going to start it tonight!" That night she gathered 18 girls in her carriage house for the first meeting of what she called the American Girl Guides, which became the Girl Scouts the following year. The first troop included her niece, Daisy Doots Gordon, who got membership number one.
Juliette, nicknamed Daisy, had grown up wealthy but was almost completely deaf after losing hearing in one ear to an infection and the other to a grain of rice thrown at her wedding. She'd lived in England, met the founder of the Boy Scouts there, and decided American girls deserved their own outdoor, do-anything organization. Her early scouts hiked, camped, played basketball with the gym curtains drawn so passersby wouldn't be shocked at girls in bloomers, and earned badges for things like first aid, telegraphy, and farming.
Today more than 50 million American women are former Girl Scouts, including astronauts like Sally Ride, journalists, judges, and every U.S. female Secretary of State so far. The famous cookies started in 1917 when one troop baked sugar cookies in their kitchens to raise money. Now Girl Scouts sell around 200 million boxes a year, and Thin Mints alone outsell most national cookie brands. All from one phone call from a half-deaf, big-hearted woman who refused to believe girls couldn't do absolutely anything.
