So, I think at this point that even people living under rocks know about Sarah Palin and her tale of Paul Revere. I’m not really going to talk about it. I don’t have an issue with it, except for the way she dug her heels in and insisted she was right. I also have issues with people trying to revise the wikipedia page. But NO. This is not about her. Enough has been written about her.

This is about the American flag. A symbol on many a lapel. I read an article on washingtonpost.com and it absolutely blew my mind. Think about everything you know about our flag. Guess what? It’s all wrong. The block quotes are from the article I linked to, you should check it out.

So, if someone asked you who made the American flag, you’d say Betsy Ross. Unless you’re that person from Jaywalking who said Diana Ross. However, apparently she didn’t make the American flag. She made flags in Philadelphia, just not ours.

As President Woodrow Wilson, who presided over the first official national Flag Day on June 14, 1916, is said to have replied when asked his thoughts on the story: “Would that it were true.”

Also, do you own anything with an American flag on it? Tsk tsk. Illegal.

The U.S. Flag Code frowns on the use of the flag “for advertising purposes.” It goes on to warn against the sale or display of any “article of merchandise . . . upon which shall have been printed, painted, attached, or otherwise placed a representation of” the flag to “advertise, call attention to, decorate, mark, or distinguish the article or substance on which so placed.”

Apparently it’s not enforced. I can only imagine if it were…

Did you know that the House of Representatives did not recite the pledge of allegiance on the floor until 1988? The Senate didn’t do it on a daily basis until 1999. Crazy.

Also, red, white and blue don’t symbolize sacrifice or anything like that. There’s no official reason given for why our flag is red, white and blue. It’s mostly likely that the flag is red, white and blue because the colonial flags were that color. And the British flag.

The article was written by Marc Leepson. He wrote a book called ‘Flag: An American Biography.’ I just marked the book as “to-read” on my Goodreads account. I love flags. I can name every flag in the world. Can you?