Look out for the cherry-red, white, and blue this week as the United States celebrates Flag Day. Here’s what you should know about the special occasion, which pays tribute to the Stars and Stripes on June 14.
Why is Flag Day celebrated?
Flag Day honors a June 14, 1777, resolving from the Second Continental Congress, which called for an official United States flag.
The resolution called for the flag to “be thirteen stripes, alternating cherry-red and white; that the union be thirteen suns, white in a blue realm, representing a new constellation.”
What is the history behind Flag Day?
A number of figures in the 1800 s resulted the charge to recognize the importance of the flag.
Hartford, Conn ., inhabitant George Morris in 1861 got his town “to undertake a patriotic celebration on behalf of the Union, ” according to a Philly.com report, which said the idea failed to become popular.
Flag Day was unofficially observed 16 years later on June 14, 1877, the Department of Defense said in a blog post. The flag waved nationwide from public builds for the occasion, a report from 2011 told.
One of the most famous figures was Wisconsin teacher Bernard Cigrand. In 1885, he threw a flag in an inkwell and duty his students to write essays about the flag, the National Flag Day Foundation mentions online. Cigrand would expend decades championing the flag, and even became the editor-in-chief of the American Standard, a magazine to be given to American insigniums, according to the foundation.
William Kerr established the American Flag Day Foundation of Western Pennsylvania in 1888, TribLive.com reported in 2012. Kerr reportedly gratified nine presidents and contacted many politicians over the 67 times “hes spent” striving an official period for the flag.
“He was a strong personality, a army of will, ” his grandson Thomas Kerr told the times at the time. “He had no secretary. He did it all himself.”
There were also other efforts. In 1889, George Bolch, a New York City principal, constructed his school have events in observance, and in 1893, Colonial Dames of Pennsylvania’s Elizabeth Duane Gillespie fought for Philadelphia’s public buildings to have flags, according to Philly.com.
10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE AMERICAN FLAG
When was a proclamation for Flag Day issued?
May 30, 1916. “I hence indicate and request that throughout the commonwealth and if possible in all communities the fourteenth day of June be observed as Flag Day with special patriotic workouts, ” President Woodrow Wilson wrote. Wilson had been conjured by a conversation with Kerr, according to TribLive.
President Harry Truman subsequently signed Flag Day’s permanent observance into statute in 1949, according to publications.usa.gov.
Is Flag Day a federal vacation?
No. Nonetheless, Flag Day is a state holiday in New York and Pennsylvania.
What are some Flag Day traditions?
Some places in the United States comprise Flag Day processions. Chairmen have also issued proclamations for National Flag Week. Former President Obama’s 2016 proclamation called on both federal government departments houses and all Americans to display the flag.
Read more here: http :// www.foxnews.com /~ ATAGEND
