More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Flag Pole Design

On June 14, 1777, the Marine Committee of the Second Continental Congress passed the Flag Resolution. “Resolved,” it declared, “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.”

The so familiar today wouldn’t become the official manifestation of that directive until much later; the Flag Resolution didn’t specify a particular arrangement for, but also to the , , and—a bit farther afield— versions of the Stars and Stripes. The notion of a national flag itself was : Up until the 18th century, flags were generally used for military designations rather than political ones. Though the U.S. and, soon after, revolutionary France would adopt the devices as nationalistic symbols, the rebel republics were unique in that usage. (The Union Jack until 1908.) In 1777, in a country that was not yet a country, design standardization simply wasn’t an expectation.