Q: I’ve heard that the Girl Scouts started in Georgia. Is that true?
A: Long before everybody was craving their yearly box – or three -- of Tagalongs and Thin Mints, Juliette Gordon Low, who was called Daisy by friends and family, had a vision. The Savannah woman was interested in what seemed like a million things -- from poetry to sculpting, to acting, to birds and dogs, to athletics -- and was searching to find something "useful to do with her life," according to the Girl Scouts of the USA website. She was in England in 1911 when she met Sir Robert Baden-Powell, who had started the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, and soon she began cultivating the idea to start a girls group in the U.S. About a year later, Low called a distant cousin and said this: "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!" (according to the website). Plus, she had tons of green fabric and needed something to do with it. Eighteen girls gathered for the first meeting of the American Girl Guides in Savannah on March 12, 1912; the name was changed to the Girl Scouts the next year. FYI, the first mention of Girl Scout cookies was in 1917, and by the '20s and '30s, Girls Scouts across the country were baking and selling cookies, ruining diets and New Year's resolutions for millions of Americans.
Q: How long has Oakland Cemetery been around? Are they still burying people there?
A: The iconic cemetery has been around since 1850, when 6 acres were purchased for a public burial ground for Atlanta, which had about 2,500 residents at the time. Even though it was designed as a "rural garden cemetery," it was originally called by the less idyllic and unoriginal names of Atlanta Graveyard and City Burial Place. Thousands of Civil War deaths forced to cemetery to grow to its present 48 acres, and it was renamed in 1872. More than 70,000 people are buried at Oakland, including former Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson, "Gone With the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell and golf legend Bobby Jones, but there are only about 40,000 markers. There are 3,000 unmarked graves of Confederate soldiers and about 17,500 unmarked graves in Potter's Field. And even though it's crowded, an average of one person is buried a month in Oakland.
Q: I think I remember that the last segment of I-75 to be built was in Atlanta. Is that true, and when was it finished?
A: To answer the first part: Sort of. Growing up in Marietta in the 1970s, I remember the cleared land and hills of dirt where I-75 is today. The interstate stretched from Tampa, Fla., to Sault St. Marie, Mich., except for a gap from Cartersville to Marietta. Finally, on Dec. 21, 1977, the hole was plugged, making the highway unbroken from the Canadian border to Tampa. Nine years later, I-75 was extended from Tampa to the Miami area, a stretch that includes the appropriately named "Alligator Alley."
What do you want to know?
If you're new in town or just have questions about this special place we call home, ask us! E-mail Andy Johnston at q&a@ajc.com.
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