100 Years of Boy Scout Eagle Awards

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Eagle Scout is the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouting program of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). A Scout who attains this rank is called an Eagle Scout or Eagle. Since its introduction in 1911, the Eagle Scout rank has been earned by more than two million young men.
Requirements include earning at least 21 merit badges and demonstrating Scout Spirit through the Boy Scout Oath and Law, service, and leadership. This includes an extensive service project that the Scout plans, organizes, leads, and manages. Eagle Scouts are presented with a medal and a badge that visibly recognizes the accomplishments of the Scout. Additional recognition can be earned through Eagle Palms, awarded for completing additional tenure, leadership, and merit badge requirements.

History:
The BSA’s highest award was originally conceived as the Wolf Scout, as shown in the June 1911 Official Handbook for Boys. The August 1911 version of the handbook changed this to Eagle Scout. The medal illustrated in the handbook was a profile of an eagle in flight, but was changed to the current design before any were issued. In their original conceptions, Life Scout, Star Scout (Life preceded Star until 1924) and Eagle Scout were not ranks, but part of the merit badge system that recognized Scouts who had earned a specified number of merit badges. Eagle Scout was awarded to any First Class Scout who had earned 21 merit badges.[3] Consequently, eight of the first nine Eagle Scouts did not earn the ranks of Life or Star.[4]
The first Eagle Scout medal was awarded in 1912 to Arthur Rose Eldred, a 17-year-old member of Troop 1 of Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York. Eldred was notified that he was to be awarded the rank of Eagle Scout in a letter from Chief Scout Executive James West, dated August 21, 1912. The design of the Eagle Scout medal had not been finalized by the National Council, so the medal was not awarded until Labor Day, September 2, 1912. Eldred was the first of three generations of Eagle Scouts; his son and grandson hold the rank as well.[5][6] Since then, more than two million Scouts have earned the rank. In 1982, 13-year-old Alexander Holsinger, of Normal, Illinois, was recognized as the one-millionth Eagle Scout,[4][7] and Anthony Thomas of Lakeville, Minnesota was the two-millionth in 2009.[8][9]
A total of 2,209,000 Scouts had earned Eagle Scout by the end of 2012;[10] out of 83,486,083 Scouts since 1911; this was just over two percent of the Boy Scouting membership.[11] In 2012, 57,976 Eagle Scout awards were presented, about 7 percent of the 2012 membership. There are four known Nobel Prize laureates who are Eagle Scouts: Dudley R. Herschbach, Peter Agre, Robert Coleman Richardson, and Frederick Reines.

Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America)
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