* Flag Day USA *

Thank you Colonel Charles Waterhouse, USMC
for allowing me to use your painting.

In a successful raid, Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon (U.S.M.C.) along with five other Marines and mercenaries crosses 500 miles of desert, successfully raiding Derne, Tripoli, raising "Old Glory", for the first time ever on foreign soil in the old world. On June 4th, 1805, the United States signs a treaty ending the conflict and "Old Glory" is still waving, with her stars and stripes intact.


* * * PROCLAMATION * * *

The President is requested to issue each year a proclamation -

ONE:

calling on United States Government officials
to display the flag of the United States
on all Government buildings on Flag Day; and

TWO:

urging the people of the United States to observe Flag Day
as the anniversary of the adoption on June 14, 1777,
by the Continental Congress
of the Stars and Stripes as the official flag
of the United States of America

* * * * *



THE HISTORY of the FLAG of THE UNITED STATES of AMERICA

1776: January 1 -- The Grand Union flag
is displayed on Prospect Hill.
It has 13 alternate red and white stripes
and the British Union Jack in the upper
left-hand corner (the canton).

1776: May - Betsy Ross reports that she sewed
the first American flag.
(No one knows with absolute certainty
who designed the first stars and stripes, or who made it.
Congressman Francis Hopkinson seems most likely
to have designed it, and today few historians believe
that Betsy Ross, a Philadelphia seamstress,
actually made the first one.)

1777: June 14 -- Continental Congress passes
the first Flag Act:
"Resolved: That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes,
alternate red and white;
that the union be thirteen stars,
white in a blue field,
representing a new Constellation."
(stars represent Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia,
Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina,
New Hampshire, Virginia, New York,
North Carolina, and Rhode Island)

1787: Captain Robert Gray carries the flag
around the world on his sailing vessel
(around the tip of South America,
to China, and beyond).
He discovered the Columbia river and named it
after his boat The Columbia.
His discovery was the basis of America's claim
to the Oregon Territory.

1795: Flag with 15 stars and 15 stripes
(Vermont, Kentucky)

1814: September 14 -- Francis Scott Key writes
"The Star-Spangled Banner."
It officially becomes the national anthem in 1931.

1818: Flag with 20 stars and 13 stripes
(it remains at 13 hereafter)
(Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi)

Act of April 4, 1818 - provided for 13 stripes and one star
for each state, to be added to the flag
on the 4th of July following the admission
of each new state.

1819: Flag with 21 stars (Illinois)

1820: Flag with 23 stars (Alabama, Maine)
first flag on Pikes Peak

1822: Flag with 24 stars (Missouri)

1836: Flag with 25 stars (Arkansas)

1837: Flag with 26 stars (Michigan)

1845: Flag with 27 stars (Florida)

1846: Flag with 28 stars (Texas)

1847: Flag with 29 stars (Iowa)

1848: Flag with 30 stars (Wisconsin)

1851: Flag with 31 stars (California)

1858: Flag with 32 stars (Minnnesota)

1859: Flag with 33 stars (Oregon)

1861: Flag with 34 stars; (Kansas)
first Confederate Flag (Stars and Bars) adopted
in Montgomery, Alabama

1863: Flag with 35 stars (West Virginia)

1865: Flag with 36 stars (Nevada)

1867: Flag with 37 stars (Nebraska)

1869: First flag on a postage stamp

1877: Flag with 38 stars (Colorado)

1890: Flag with 43 stars (North Dakota,
South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho)

1891: Flag with 44 stars (Wyoming)

1892:"Pledge of Allegiance" first published in a magazine
called "The Youth's Companion." Authorship was claimed
for James B. Upham and Francis Bellamy.
In 1939 the United States Flag Association ruled
that Bellamy was the author of the original pledge.

The words, "under God" were added on June 14, 1954.

In pledging allegiance to the flag,
stand with the right hand over the heart or at attention.
Men remove their headdress.
Persons in uniform give the military salute.

All pledge together:



"I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic
for which it stands,
one Nation
under GOD,
indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all."

1896: Flag with 45 stars (Utah)

1908: Flag with 46 stars (Oklahoma)

1909: Robert Peary places the flag his wife sewed
atop the North Pole.
He left pieces of another flag along the way.

1912: Flag with 48 stars (New Mexico, Arizona)
Executive Order of President Taft dated June 24, 1912
established proportions of the flag and provided
for arrangement of the stars in six horizontal rows
of eight each, a single point of each star
to be upward.

1931: Congress officially recognizes `The Star-Spangled Banner'
as the national anthem of the United States.
Its stirring words were written by Francis Scott Key.

1945: The flag that flew over Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,
is flown over the White House on August 14,
when the Japanese accepted surrender terms.

1949: August 3 -- President Truman signs bill requesting
the President call for Flag Day (June 14) observance
each year by proclamation.

1959: Flag with 49 stars (Alaska)
Executive Order of President Eisenhower dated
January 3, 1959 -
provided for the arrangement of the stars
in seven rows of seven stars each,
staggered horizontally and vertically.
Executive Order of President Eisenhower dated
August 21, 1959 -
provided for the arrangement of the stars
in nine rows of stars staggered horizontally
and eleven rows of stars staggered vertically.

1960: Flag with 50 stars (Hawaii)

1963: Flag placed on top of Mount Everest
by Barry Bishop.

1969: July 20 -- The American flag is placed on the moon
by Neil Armstrong.

1976: United States Bicentennial, and
the Bicentennial of the American Flag.

2001:September 11 -- THe American Flag is once again raised
in the midst of the rubble of the World Trade Center
by firemen who are working to rescue victims.

* * * * *


THE MEANING of OUR FLAG

It means all that the
Declaration of Independence meant.
It means all that the Constitution
of our people,organizing for
justice, for liberty and
for happiness meant.

...Our flag carries American
ideas, American history and
American feelings.
Beginning with the colonies,
and coming down to our time,
in its sacred heraldry,in
its sacred insignia, it has
gathered and stored,chiefly,
this supreme idea: divine right
of liberty in man.

Every color means liberty;
every thread means liberty;
every form of star and beam
or stripe of light means
liberty, not lawlessness, but
organized institutional liberty-
liberty through law
and laws for liberty.

* by Henry Ward Beecher*




June 14, 1775
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE ARMY!!

NEXT – To Our Veterans
BACK – He Will Raise You Up - Memorial Day 2005