On June 14 Americans celebrate Flag Day. We honor and pay tribute to 'Old Glory,' with the 'Pledge of Allegiance, speeches, beautiful renditions of the national anthem, and small and large displays of the flag.
RELATED: The History Of Flag Day
To help celebrate the day, we compiled a list of 10 facts you may not know about Flag Day.
10 FACTS
1. Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. It commemorates the adoption of the American flag by resolution of the Second Continental Congress in 1777.
2. The American flag, as we know it today, consists of 13 horizontal red and white stripes, each representing the 13 original colonies of the United States, and a blue rectangle in the canton with 50 white, five-pointed stars representing the 50 states of the Union.
3. The 1777 resolution did not set the size or proportions of the flag, or even what shape the constellation of stars should be. As a result, flags of the era showed the constellation of stars in different arrangements, and flags were made with differing proportions. It was not until 1912 that the flag’s design was standardized.
4. A new star is added with the inclusion of every new state to the Union. The number of stars increased to 15 in 1795, 20 by 1818, and the trend continued. The 50th star was added with the inclusion of the state of Hawaii to the Union in 1959.
5. Until 1818, a new stripe was also added for each new state. The famous Star-Spangled Banner that inspired our national anthem had 15 stars and 15 stripes.
6. The first flag was not made by Betsy Ross. We do know that Ross was a seamstress and that she probably did sew American flags; she just didn’t create the first one.
7. The flag got its nickname, “Old Glory,” from William Driver, a Massachusetts-born resident of Nashville, Tennessee who hid his homemade flag from Confederate troops, unfurling it again when the city came under the control of federal troops.
8. The Pledge of Allegiance was written not for Flag Day, but for Columbus Day.
9. Flag Day was founded by a school teacher named Bernard J. Cigrand, who began observing the day with his class at Stony Hill School in Waubeka, Wisconsin.
10. President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation establishing June 14th as Flag Day on May 30, 1916.
