Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Flag Day


Do you know that June 14th is Flag Day -- a day to commemorate the stars and stripes? This date has slowly disappeared in significance.

On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress approved the design of a national flag.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation establishing a national Flag Day on June 14. Before 1916, many towns and a few states had been celebrating the day. Congressional legislation designating that date as the national Flag Day was signed into law by President Harry Truman in 1949. The legislation also called upon the president to issue a flag day proclamation every year.

Per the Library of Congress: "According to legend, in 1776, George Washington commissioned Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross to create a flag for the new nation. Scholars debate this legend, but agree that Mrs. Ross most likely knew Washington and sewed flags. To date, there have been twenty-seven official versions of the flag, but the arrangement of the stars varied according to the flag-makers' preferences until 1912 when President Taft standardized the then-new flag's forty-eight stars into six rows of eight. The forty-nine-star flag (1959-60), as well as the fifty-star flag, also have standardized star patterns. The current version of the flag dates to July 4, 1960, after Hawaii became the fiftieth state on August 21, 1959."

Here's a song sung by Bill Murray to make you smile. This song is popularly known as "You're a grand old flag," but was originally called "You're a grand old rag" when George M. Cohan created his musical, "George Washington, Jr."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good for people to know.