Thursday, June 14, 2007

FLAG DAY

Yes, here in the United States...today is Flag Day. It's the 255th birthday of our flag.  I found the following information on this special but sadly overlooked day.

"On June 14, 1777, the United States Continental Congress officially declared the Stars and Stripes the US flag. Then, one hundred years later, public buildings started displaying the flag to recognize the 100th Birthday of the US Flag.

But what's cool is that it was mostly one guy, a schoolteacher in Wisconsin, who started the idea that everybody should celebrate Flag Day. In 1885, B.J. Cigrand had the kids in his school observe Flag Day, or, as he called it, Flag Birthday. The idea caught on, and soon more teachers had their students celebrate Flag Day with special activities.

It wasn't until 1916 that Flag Day was officially named as a holiday. And it wasn't until 1949 that the National Flag Day bill was signed. But teachers and kids had been celebrating it long before that! "

On my little Mary Engelbreit desk calendar for today is the following quote from George Bernard Shaw, " Liberty is the breath of life to nations."

 

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Linda thanks for explaining Flag day ~ I think it is a lovely idea and so Patriotic ~ Have seen one or two blogs celebrating Flag day and I wondered what was behind it so thanks for telling me ~ Ally x

Anonymous said...

Sadly, if we fly our flag we get accused of being racist.
http://journals.aol.co.uk/acoward15/andy-the-bastard

Anonymous said...

TY for the post, very nice.
Sugar

Anonymous said...

I hope you had a good Flag Day! As someone else commented, it's considered racist for us to fly our flag 'in case we offend someone.'!!!! Jeannette xx  http://journals.aol.co.uk/jlocorriere05/Welcometomytravels/