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They're each famous for different reasons. But as kids, these women wore the same uniform.

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Girl Scouts

When was the last time a Girl Scout inspired you to follow your dreams?

If your answer involves dreaming of Girl Scout cookies, then I don't blame you — getting your hands on those Thin Mints can be a real motivator.

But what you may not realize is that Girl Scouts have influenced the world in much bigger ways that don't involve their awesome cookies. In fact, some Girl Scouts have changed the course of history.


We're talking astronauts, political leaders, activists, and more. Girl Scouts of the USA reports that an incredible 64% of today's American women leaders were once Girl Scouts.

Image via Girl Scouts of the USA.

This organization helps girls understand what they're capable of by giving them badges for accomplishments in areas such as entrepreneurship, citizenship, and STEM. The girls practice an incredible range of skills, from running a business to creating art to tackling cybersecurity.

And if their roster of prominent former scouts is any indication, every Girl Scout is capable of greatness. Here's a look at seven of them.

1. Lucille Ball created her own space in an industry that hadn't yet made space for her.

When a Girl Scout named Elizabeth dressed up as Lucille Ball in 2017, she wasn't just wearing a costume. Ball was a former Girl Scout, and Elizabeth was portraying her spirit and determination in a Girl Scout photo shoot celebrating Women's History Month.

Lucille Ball cracked people up with her wacky physical comedy, her expressive face, and her "I Love Lucy" character's knack for getting into hilariously troublesome situations. And while audiences laughed, Ball was making history.

She became one of the first female comic leads on television and often defied traditional gender stereotypes in her role. "I Love Lucy" was also a massive hit, ranking as the #1 show in the country for four of its six seasons.

Off-screen, Ball was also a trailblazer. She and Desi Arnaz co-owned the production studio Desilu Productions until she bought out his shares and ran it on her own. That made her the first woman to run a major television studio. And the hits that came later on her lot, like "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "Star Trek," and "Mission: Impossible," show that she did a fantastic job.

2. Tammy Duckworth changed what it means to be a United States senator.

In this digital age, nearly all of our senators are on Twitter, and if you follow Tammy Duckworth's account, you might have seen messages like this one: "Thanks, @girlscouts, for teaching me leadership skills I use in the Senate everyday."

Duckworth still has her Girl Scout uniform and sash, which carries an impressive number of badges. The skills she learned to earn those badges no doubt helped her become the incredible trailblazer she is today.

In fact, Duckworth just can't stop making history. She served as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot in Iraq, where she lost her legs in a 2004 grenade attack. In 2012, she became the first woman with a disability elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and the first member of Congress born in Thailand.

Image via U.S. Senate Photographic Studio/Renee Bouchard/Wikimedia Commons.

And in 2016, she was elected to her current position, making her the second ever Asian-American woman senator.

Then Duckworth did something that the Founding Fathers probably never saw coming. In April 2018, she became the first U.S. senator to give birth while in office. At just 10 days old, baby Maile followed in her mom's footsteps by making history of her own as the first newborn to grace the Senate floor.

3. Katie Couric broke into the boys' club of nightly news anchors.

When the Girl Scouts reached their 100th anniversary in 2012, news anchor Katie Couric went all out to celebrate them. She wrote about the organization on her ABC blog, interviewed Girl Scouts on her show, and even donned a vintage Girl Scout uniform for the occasion.

"Girl Scouts taught me some of the basic and essential principles and values that I still hold dear today, like being truthful, helpful, and independent," she said in 2012.

Couric has demonstrated these values throughout her career as a journalist by bringing attention to important issues, including colon cancer and gun violence. She's also held top anchor positions at all of the three major television networks: ABC, NBC, and CBS.

Image via Girl Scouts of the USA.

Breaking into the news industry's boys' club took some time, but she never gave up. She started at the ABC News bureau in 1979 and eventually became the host of the CBS Evening News in 2006, making her the first solo woman anchor among the "big three" weekday nightly news broadcasts, according to Reuters.

Now, as a Television Hall of Famer and a New York Times bestselling author, Couric continues to use her platform to show girls that it's possible to overcome the obstacles they face.

4. Susan Collins has set the second longest consecutive voting streak in the Senate.

Growing up in Caribou, Maine, now-Sen. Susan Collins had some great role models: Both her parents served as the mayors of her hometown. Not only that, but she was also a Girl Scout with some amazing troop leaders who inspired her to always persevere toward her goals. "[Girl Scouts] helps to build strong women," Collins told a young scout who interviewed her in 2014.

In 1994, when Collins ran for governor, she became the first woman to become a nominee for a major party in Maine. Then, in 1996, Collins was elected to the Senate, and she has kept her seat ever since.

Image via U.S. Senate Photographic Studio/Wikimedia Commons.

Collins is now the most senior Republican woman in the Senate. She has spent her time focusing on causes including Alzheimer's research, diabetes research, and support for small businesses. In fact, Collins has had a say in every single one of the more than 6,600 decisions that the Senate has voted on since 1996 because she has never missed a vote. In 2015, she even broke her ankle running in heels to make sure she cast a vote.

Collins is also proud to be one of 73% of women senators who were once Girl Scouts. "That to me just proves that Girl Scouts learn leadership ability, have confidence in themselves, and learn to work together as a team," she said.

5. Dolores Huerta gave us the rallying cry we need to make the world a better place.

When civil rights icon Dolores Huerta steps up to a microphone, you'd never guess that she was once a shy child. However, in a 2009 interview, Huerta credited Girl Scouts for helping her come out of her shell and learn to speak in public.

"In Girl Scouts, I learned how to be strong, to believe in myself, and to be open to new ideas," Huerta wrote to young girls.

Image via Girl Scouts of the USA.

It's no wonder she ended up coining the rallying cry "Sí se puede" — Spanish for "Yes, we can." Her work as a community organizer began in the 1960s and became a blueprint for how many activists mobilize today.

Through her advocacy for women's rights, workers' rights, and immigrant rights, Huerta influenced labor laws that we still have today. She co-founded the United Farm Workers, a labor union for farmworkers in the United States, with Cesar Chavez.

Huerta is often hailed as an inspiration for activist movements and has received a number of major awards including the 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was a Girl Scout from the ages of 8 to 18. At the age of 83, she was still continuing her community organizing work as president of the Dolores Huerta foundation.

6. Susan Wojcicki has carved out much-needed space for women and girls in tech.

Susan Wojcicki was only 11 years old when she started her first business: She went door to door selling homemade "spice ropes" made with braided yarn.

Since then, Wojcicki has proved herself as a go-getter in the world of business. For example, you may have heard of a "little" company known as Google — which started with co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in her garage in 1998. And as the company's first marketing manager, she became known as the most important person in advertising.

Image via Girl Scouts of the USA.

Wojcicki eventually became the CEO of YouTube, the second most popular website in the world — just behind its parent company, Google.

She uses her influential position to help other women and girls get into tech by collaborating with the Girl Scouts of the USA, an organization she was once a proud member of herself. She mentors Girl Scouts who are working to earn their cybersecurity badges, and she also leads Google's Made with Code, an initiative to inspire girls to get involved with tech activities like coding and 3D printing.

7. Queen Latifah is leaving her mark on every corner of the entertainment world.

Name a major award for entertainers, and Queen Latifah probably has a win or a nomination for it.

She first made her mark on the entertainment world as a rapper, releasing her first hip-hop album in 1989 at the age of 19 and kicking off her success as an MC. This is especially remarkable considering how much men have dominated the hip-hop scene. And now, she's also known for her work on television and in movies, including the 1990s hit sitcom "Living Single," the 1996 film "Set It Off," and more recently, the massively successful 2017 film "Girls Trip." 

Image via Girl Scouts of the USA.

Throughout her career, she has earned a Grammy Award, a Golden Globe Award, an Emmy Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award nomination. But before she released that very first album, Queen Latifah was a Girl Scout and earning badges for her sash.

Today Latifah clearly appreciates Girl Scouts for helping start off on the right foot. She narrated this video to celebrate the Girl Scouts tradition of "Preparing girls for a lifetime of leadership."

These actresses, musicians, scientists, and politicians all have one thing in common.

Posted by Upworthy on Thursday, July 26, 2018

Perhaps the next time a woman in comedy makes you laugh or a piece of digital technology leaves you in awe, you'll think of the Girl Scouts.

Being a Girl Scout helped these women develop their leadership skills, confidence, and ambitious attitudes. In order to earn Girl Scout badges, they had to prove themselves capable of helping people. And they've certainly done so in their careers by inspiring countless other women to forge their own paths across a wide range of industries, including sports, science, philanthropy, and business.

What's more, they all uphold the Girl Scouts value of making the world a better place.

Keep their stories in mind the next time you see a Girl Scout — you might be looking at one of our future leaders.

via James Breakwell/X

All parents have had similar convos with thier kiddos.

Raising kids is tough, but there's a lot of laughs along the way. Especially when actual conversations start, as kids begin trying to make sense out of the world around them, ask questions, and test mommy and daddy's resolve.

Back in 2018, comedy writer and children's book author James Breakwell, with four daughters who were all under the age of eight at the time, shared their hilarious conversations on X. From these tweets, it looks like comedy runs in the family. Here's a sampling of some Breakwell's funniest kid-inspired tweets.

 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

While Breakwell's 7-year-old wasn't as heavily featured, when she was quoted, the sarcasm was palpable. Which makes sense, considering that kiddos begin understanding this mechanism around that age.

 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

Kids really do say the darnedest things, and we love them for it. It one of the many, many ways then bring so much joy to the world. It almost makes up for the headaches and sleepless nights, doesn't it.

This article originally appeared seven years ago.

Walt Disney and Ray Bradbury.

The world’s greatest innovators think and behave differently from us mere mortals. They have a unique view of the world and are dedicated to their craft in ways that most would deem obsessive. But without that type of dedication, Steve Jobs could never have given us the Macintosh, Michael Jordan would never have been able to fly, and Michelangelo would have never painted the Sistine Chapel.

It’s hard for the average person to understand what makes a cultural innovator tick, which is why an interview with groundbreaking author Ray Bradbury on Walt Disney is so inspiring. It lifts the veil on what great artists see in one another that most of us can’t. Bradbury is the acclaimed author of classics such as Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, who was a friend of Disney and worked with his legendary company as a creative consultant.

What did Ray Bradbury think of Walt Disney?

In a 2004 interview, Bradbury explained where the incredibly ambitious and creative Disney got his drive and determination.


“If there’s any secret at all, it’s because Walt, like myself, is not an optimist but an optimal behaviorist. Which means that every day of your life, if you behave well, you begin to feel well,” Bradbury said. “So that’s not false, that’s real. You get your work done every day, and at the end of a week, a month, a year, you’ll turn around and say, hey, look what I did. So you feel good. That’s real optimism. Optimal behavior.”

“He could look back at the end of each year and see his behavior, and it made him want to go on. A lot of people are pessimists because they’ve never done anything,” Bradbury continued. “If you go to bed every night having not done anything, you’re going to wake up unhappy, aren’t you? So the answer to that is do something every day. Be busy, for God’s sake, be busy.”

 walt disney, disney world, mickey mouse, disney company, disney theme parks, A statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse.via Paul Beattie/Flickr

What is a behavioral optimist?

Although “behavioral optimist” isn’t an official psychological term, it’s one that Bradbury often used to describe himself. “I’ve learned that by doing things, things get done. I’m not an optimist; I’m an optimal behaviorist. We ensure the future by doing it,” he said. “Optimists and pessimists are blind. But I’m not either. I’m an optimal behaviorist. In other words, I behave at the top of my lungs every day. There’s no guarantee, but you’re going to have a heck of a lot of fun. You’ll come to the end of your life with the secure knowledge that you tried everything.”

There are just two critical things in life, he said, “Being in love with your wife or husband and being in love with your work. And then everything’s fine.”

If you’ve always dreamed of living a life like Walt Disney, using your imagination to entertain and uplift humanity, you can start by looking at life in the same way. Big goals can often seem too lofty when we think about the finished product. Instead, take small, consistent steps every day towards achieving your goal. Writing a 300-page book may seem like too much work, but if you write a page a day, you’ll have a book before the end of the year. The key is to stay focused and consistent, just like Uncle Walt.

Pop Culture

'Wicked' author says one line in 'The Wizard of Oz' inspired Elphaba and Glinda's backstory

Gregory Maguire says he "fell down to the ground" laughing when the idea hit him.

Public domain

The two witches in "The Wizard of Oz" clearly had a history together.

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book or listened to a piece of music and wondered, "How did they come up with that idea?" The creative process is so enigmatic even artists themselves don't always know where their ideas come from, so It's a treat when we get to hear the genesis of a brilliant idea straight from the horse's mouth. If you've watched "Wicked" and wondered where the idea for the friendship between Elphaba (the Wicked Witch) and Glinda (the Good Witch) came from, the author of the book has shared the precise moment it came to him.

The hit movie "Wicked" is based on the 20-year-old hit stage musical, which is based on the novel "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" written by Gregory Maguire. While the musical is a simplified version of the 1995 book, the basic storyline—the origin story of the two witches from "The Wizard of Oz"—lies at the heart of both. In an interview with BBC, Maguire explained how Elphaba and Glinda's friendship popped into his head.

 

Maguire was visiting Beatrix Potter's farm in Cumbria, England, and thinking about "The Wizard of Oz," which he had loved as a child and thought could be an interesting basis for a story about evil.

"I thought 'alright, what do we know about 'The Wizard of Oz' from our memories,'" he said. "We have the house falling on the witch. What do we know about that witch? All we know about that witch is that she has feet. So I began to think about Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West…

 glinda, elphaba, wicked,  In "Wicked," the two Oz witches met as students at Shiz University.  Giphy GIF by Wicked 

"There is one scene in the 1939 film where Billie Burke [Glinda the Good Witch] comes down looking all pink and fluffy, and Margaret Hamilton [the Wicked Witch of the West] is all crawed and crabbed and she says something like, 'I might have known you'd be behind this, Glinda!' This was my memory, and I thought, now why is she using Glinda's first name? They have known each other. Maybe they've known each other for a long time. Maybe they went to college together. And I fell down onto the ground in the Lake District laughing at the thought that they had gone to college together."

In "Wicked," Glinda and the Wicked Witch, Elphaba, meet as students at Shiz University, a school of wizardry. They get placed as roommates, loathe each other at first, but eventually become best friends. The story grows a lot more complicated from there (and the novel goes darker than the stage play), but it's the character development of the two witches and their relationship with one another that force us to examine our ideas about good and evil.

  - YouTube  youtu.be  

 

Maguire also shared with the Denver Center for Performing Arts what had inspired him to use the "Wizard of Oz" characters in the first place.

"I was living in London in the early 1990’s during the start of the Gulf War. I was interested to see how my own blood temperature chilled at reading a headline in the usually cautious British newspaper, the Times of London: 'Sadaam Hussein: The New Hitler?' I caught myself ready to have a fully formed political opinion about the Gulf War and the necessity of action against Sadaam Hussein on the basis of how that headline made me feel. The use of the word Hitler – what a word! What it evokes! When a few months later several young schoolboys kidnapped and killed a toddler, the British press paid much attention to the nature of the crime. I became interested in the nature of evil, and whether one really could be born bad. I considered briefly writing a novel about Hitler but discarded the notion due to my general discomfort with the reality of those times. But when I realized that nobody had ever written about the second most evil character in our collective American subconscious, the Wicked Witch of the West, I thought I had experienced a small moment of inspiration. Everybody in America knows who the Wicked Witch of the West is, but nobody really knows anything about her. There is more to her than meets the eye."

 wizard of oz, wicked witch of the west The Wicked Witch of the West has a story of her own.  Giphy  

Authors and artists—and their ideas—help hold a mirror up to humanity for us to see and reflect on who we are, and "Wicked" is one of those stories that makes us take a hard look at what we're seeing in that mirror. Thanks, Gregory Maguire, for launching us on a collective journey that not only entertains but has the potential to change how we see one another.

This story originally appeared last year.

What an amazingly kind gesture.

Closed adoptions—meaning adoptions with no contact between the biological parents and adoptive families—offer privacy, protection and emotional closure. However, it can understandably still be incredibly difficult for biological mothers to instantly and drastically remove their biological child from their life, even if they know they are doing what's best.

This was the case for Alicia Mae Holloway’s biological mom. In a video shared to her TikTok account, the dancer and television personality shared that her adoptive mother, Evelyn, “saw how hard it was” for her birth mom to give Holloway up for adoption. So Evelyn came up with a kind gesture that Holloway dubbed “the sweetest thing.”

“She was like, ‘okay, I’ll make you a deal. Every six months, I’ll send you a picture of Alicia and a little update in a written card of how she’s doing.’”

Getting those biannual letters out wasn’t as simple as dropping them off in the mail either.

As Holloway explained, she had been conceived during an affair her birth mother—a white woman, married to a white man, with three white children—had with a Black man. Not only could Holloway’s birth mom not afford a fourth kid, she feared what her “racist” family might do upon seeing a biracial baby, and told everyone that it was a stillborn.

All this to say, Holloway’s birth mom didn’t want the letters arriving at her home, potentially risking anyone from her family seeing it. Evelyn would therefore need to send the letters to a friend’s house.

But sure enough, Evelyn kept good on that promise. For 17 years, Holloways' birth mom got to celebrate milestones in her daughter’s life. Meanwhile, Holloway had no idea this exchange was happening.

“I get chills when I think about how she was watching me grow up and I had no idea,” Holloway told Today. “She knew I was a dancer and that I was doing beauty pageants and that I was a good kid.”

Holloway added that just before her 18th birthday, she was made aware of her adoptive mom’s kind gesture. And they even went to meet Holloway’s birth mom, an event Holloway that noted was in many ways more emotional for her two moms than it was for her, recalling that both women “had a long, long, long embrace and were both bawling their eyes out.”

As for Holloway, she told Today that she feels no ill will towards her biological mom. Rather, she sees the decision as “an act of love," that set her up for a truly “amazing life.” At the end of their meeting, after the important questions pertaining to family health history and whatnot, all she had to say was “thank you.”

And from the looks of it, she is as happy as ever living life with her adopted parents, who honestly could pass for her biological parents any day.

It's interesting to think about how none of us know our full life story, how many things both bigs and small remain mysteries. But when we are lucky enough to discover hidden truths, we unlock yet another part of ourselves.

This article originally appeared last year.

The name Tiffany goes way back to Tiphaine Raguenel, who lived in Mont Saint Michel in the 1300s.

Depending on what generation you belong to, when you hear the name Tiffany, you might think of the famous jewelry store, the teen singer from the 80s or the much-less-in-the-spotlight daughter of President Trump. Most likely, you don't think of a woman who lived in the Middle Ages.

In fact, if you were listening to an audiobook set in medieval times and the narrator introduced a character named Tiffany, you'd probably get yanked right out of the story as your brain would say, "Wait, why is there a Tiffany in this story? Isn't that a much more modern name?"

 tiffany, 1980s, the name tiffany Tiffany was a popular name—and singer—in the 80s.  Giphy  

It's actually not, which is exactly why The Tiffany Problem is called The Tiffany Problem.

The Tiffany Problem refers to the fact that people in modern times will sometimes see something as anachronistic when it's not. It's something writers, filmmakers and other storytellers have to be aware of, as it can feel like there's a historical problem even if there isn't an actual historical problem.

Abraham Piper explains the dilemma and how it was coined:

 

As Piper shares, fantasy author Jo Walton coined the term "The Tiffany Problem" and explained it:

"Your readers are modern people and know what they know, which is fine except when what they know isn’t actually right. For instance, the name Tiffany sounds extremely modern to us. It feels jarring when we read it as a character name in a historical setting, where we’d be quite happy with names like Anna and Jane. But our instinct is wrong, because Tiffany is a form of Theophania, and it was fairly common in medieval England and France. It went out of fashion later, and it’s because we don’t have seventeenth to nineteenth century examples that it feels modern. But you still can’t use it in a fantasy novel set in the exact time and place when the name would have been historically accurate, because it will jerk the reader out of their reading trance. They know it’s wrong and you can’t tell them that what they know is wrong."

 you know I'm right, schitt's creek People often don't realize that what they think they know is wrong.  Giphy GIF by Schitt's Creek 

Piper had also shared that "ha ha," which seems like a casual, modern colloquialism, is actually very old, with the first known use coming from a monk 1,000 years ago. He also mentions "OMG," which was used by a World War I admiral in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1917. And "hubby" as a slang term for husband? That goes way back to the 1680s. Who knew?

It's a bit ironic that writers who strive to ensure their historical fiction works are historically accurate can find themselves stymied by people being just flat-out wrong about what's accurate and what's not. Humans are interesting creatures, aren't we?

For more info about the name Tiffany than you ever thought you wanted to know but will be delighted to learn, CGP Grey created a whole video about the name that has 4.7 million views. Tiffany exploded the 1980s, but CGP Grey goes all the way back to the year 300 to uncover the origins of the name. It's genuinely entertaining. Watch:

  - YouTube  youtu.be  

 

If you're still here and want to take an even deeper dive into the history of Tiffany, this other video from CGP Grey is an incredible rabbit hole that will make you appreciate the work historians do and marvel at how much digging Grey actually did to provide the original Tiffany history video. We're talking trips to the deep dark corners of The British Library, the largest library in the world, and hours and hours of paging through books just to find the original source of this one poem that includes the name "Tiffany." It's a journey, but a fascinating one.

Enjoy "Someone Dead Ruined My Life… Again":

  - YouTube  youtu.be  

 

This article originally appeared two years ago.