On this day, part one of the book ‘Scouting for Boys’, written and illustrated by British army officer Robert Baden-Powell, was first published by Horace Cox. The previous year, Baden-Powell had held an experimental camp, the Brownsea Island Scout Camp where he used his draft version of the book, then entitled Boy Patrols, to test his ideas for training boys in scouting. Although based on his military experiences, the book was intended as a general manual for self-instruction in observation, tracking and woodcraft skills as well as self-discipline and self-improvement. In 1910, Baden-Powell founded the Scout Association which in a short space of time become the renowned global organisation that we know today.
