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What Do You Really Know About the United States Flag?

On June 14 the US will once again celebrate Flag Day with lots of people flying the familiar Stars & Stripes with its 50 stars and 13 alternating stripes of red and white.

The flag has looked this way since July of 1960, when it was officially updated to reflect Hawaii’s admission to the Union as the 50th state. So for most Americans, our flag has “always” looked this way. But the real history of the American Flag has included many twists and turns.

--The flag of the United States of America has gone through 27 different versions since the Revolutionary War. The original flag used during the Revolution didn’t even have any stars. Instead, the Union Jack of Britain filled the area where the stars are today. So, paintings you may have seen of Washington’s army crossing the Delaware flying the Stars and Stripes are wrong.

--The idea of a flag for our new nation was first approved by the Congress in 1777. But it wasn’t until 1912 that President Taft signed an executive order that standardized what the flag should look like, including its size and the arrangement of the stars. Before then it wasn’t unusual to see a variety of versions of the “official” American flag.

--Flag Day is celebrated on June 14th because that is the day the flag was created by Congress in 1777.

--The 50-star flag we use today was designed by a 17-year-old high school student, Bob Heft, of Lancaster, OH, as a project for his history class. He got a B-minus, but he made a deal with his teacher, Stanley Pratt, that he would get an A if he submitted the design in the national competition for a new flag and it won. President Eisenhower chose Heft’s design out of 1,500 entries and Pratt lived up to his part of the bargain.

--Bernard Cigrand, a grade school teacher in Waubeka, WI, held the first formal observance of a “Flag Day” in his schoolroom in 1885. He spent the rest of his life promoting the idea of a holiday dedicated to the flag, and in 1916 President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that formally established the holiday.

--The pledge of allegiance to the flag wasn’t created for flag day, but instead in honor of Columbus Day. James Upham, who worked for a newspaper called “Youth’s Companion,” originated the idea and a Youth’s Companion editor, Francis Bellamy, wrote the actual pledge.

--Flag Day is a national holiday, but not a federal holiday. That’s why you won’t get the day off from work, unless you work in Pennsylvania. It’s the only state to declare the day a state holiday.

--Betsy Ross made the first flag, right? Nope. Try Mary Pickersgill, a Baltimore seamstress who made a pair of flags for Fort McHenry in 1813. The larger of them, measuring 30 x 42 feet, became the “Star-Spangled Banner” that Francis Scott Key wrote about in the national anthem. As for Ross, she was a seamstress and most likely did sew flags, but there’s no evidence that she made the first “American Flag.”

--“Old Glory” was a specific flag, not just any American Flag. It’s become a nickname, but the original “Old Glory” was owned by sea captain William Driver, who flew it on his ship from 1824-1837. After his retirement it was displayed publicly near his home in Nashville, TN. Today both Old Glory and Pickersgill’s Star-Spangled Banner are in the Smithsonian Institution.

Now for some superlatives . . .

--You want a big flag? Try 505 feet wide by 225 feet tall. “Superflag” was made for the late Ski Dempski and delivered to him on Flag Day in 1992. It weighs 3,000 pounds and cost Dempski $80,000. It has been unfurled at events like the World Series and the Superbowl and was hung from Hoover Dam in 1996 for the Olympic Torch relay. Today there are several superflags, and if you happen to have 500 spare friends available to help unfurl it, you can rent it for your next Little League game or other event.

--For the world’s largest free-flying American Flag, head down to Fort Lee, NJ, on Flag Day, where this 90-foot-wide, 60-foot-long, 450-pound nylon banner will be hung from the George Washington Bridge for the day.

--If you want to see the world’s smallest American Flag, you’ll have to bring a very large magnifying glass with you. Jang-Bae Jeon and Carlo Foresca, engineering students at the University of Texas in Dallas, created the tiny banner in 2006 using a Zyvex ion beam nano-manipulator. The entire flag, including all 50 stars and 13 stripes, is a total of seven microns tall. To give you some basis for comparison, a human hair is 100 microns in diameter. Jeon said they tried to get their microscopic creation certified by the Guinness Book of World Records, but the book’s editors “told us they don’t have a method to actually see the flag,” said Jeon.

--You might think the farthest travelled American Flag is on the Moon, but you’d be wrong. In 1977, a small flag was included inside the voyager 1 spacecraft when it was launched on its history-making exploration of the out solar system. Today Voyager 1 has left the solar system entirely and is over 13.5 billion miles from earth and travelling at over 38,000 mph.

--Finally, the tallest flagpole in North America stands proudly at Acuity Insurance Company’s headquarters along Interstate 43 between Milwaukee and Green Bay, WI. It’s 400 feet tall and tapers from an 11-foot diameter at ground level to 5 ½-feet at the tip. It flies a 60 x 120- foot nylon flag, and you better hope the owners have some paint rollers, because it takes over 500 gallons to give this flagpole a new coat.