How, exactly, did the Apollo 11 astronauts come to deploy a U.S. flag on the lunar surface? This paper explores the technical aspects and international considerations surrounding that $5.50 flag.

While 95 years separate the adoption of Canada’s inaugural flag and the adoption of its National flag, the maple-leaf trail connecting one to the other is continuous. The author summarizes Canadian flag history with a cogent narrative running from 1870 to 1965.

Nevada has had the dubious distinction of having had more official flags than any other state in the union. Those designs receive detailed scrutiny and description: the Sparks-Day Flag of 1905, the Crisler Flag of 1915, the Schellback Design of 1929, and the Raggio Modification of 1991, in which the author played a key role.

Some flags influence the designs of others. This paper traces the “family tree” of the red-white-blue horizontal tribar of the Netherlands through five major lines: New Amsterdam, Russian, South African, French, and Dutch, asserting direct ancestry or at least influence for over a hundred flags.

No eyewitness described in specific detail what flag or flags flew over the Alamo. One candidate, the guidon of the New Orleans Greys, is held in a museum collection in Mexico and its return has been eagerly sought by Texas politicians and other activists for many years. This article explores the history of the flag and the obstacles to its return.

While the rattlesnake-and-stripes flag that currently flies on the bow of every U.S. warship has a long tradition in American flag use, its design was a 19th-century mistake based on an erroneous 1776 engraving. This paper explores the history of the flag that never existed.

The author explores the broad range of Canadian symbols in grants of arms and flags over the past 15 years, going well beyond variations on the maple leaf to the animals, objects, flowers, and colors used by individuals and organizations to represent Canada. This paper was originally delivered as the keynote speech at the Association’s 37th annual meeting.

The author draws on his work in the field to explore flag use across Guam, Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia. His comparative analysis examines the significance of flags within the broader context of an emergent civil religion within the political cultures of three different but adjacent political entities.

The gold-harp-on-green flag and the orange-white-green tricolor, two flags for one republic, demonstrate the contrasts of Ireland. One is indigenous and traditional, the other is imported and legislated. Their designs, while vastly different, are both compelling.

A family member examines the legend of Betsy Ross’s role in the creation of the first American flag and how that legend became overwhelmingly popular. Previously little-known and unknown evidence that shows Betsy Ross was well known during her lifetime, much earlier than the 1870 William Canby lecture. Such celebrity is strong support for what has been, until now, considered only a family “myth”.

The competing claims of two designers of the first flag of Confederate States of America have never been resolved. This paper, explains the history of their dispute, weighs the evidence supporting their cases, and explores the possibility that the actual genesis of the Stars and Bars may have arisen from an altogether different source.

Nearly 500 respondents to an Internet-based poll rated the designs of the 150 city flags documented in Raven 9/10, American City Flags, as the Association followed its “hands-off” scholarly effort on city flags with a “hands-on” survey of their quality, with spectacular results. The survey validated the basic principles espoused by Good Flag, Bad Flag, and triggered extensive nationwide press coverage.

As the U.S. commemorates the bicentennial of the 1803-06 Lewis & Clark Expedition, this essay explores nationalistic rituals, celebrations, and public displays of nationhood both in the expedition and its immediate aftermath. In the invented traditions deployed in colonial encounters with Native Americans, the U.S. flag articulated the national pride of the young republic and the newly acquired sovereignty of the United States over the native populations and their lands.

What flag did General Washington actually fly outside of Boston on 1 January 1776? This incisive and well-researched analysis demonstrates that the flag over Prospect Hill was more likely the British Union Flag, with the English and Scottish crosses overall, rather than the 13-striped Continental Colors as believed by historians for 150 years.

Québec’s size and unique historical origins lead many to consider the province a “nation within a nation”, with concomitant challenges in the use of the provincial and national flags in official ceremonies. A veteran of many years of resolving these challenges describes their difficult background and resourceful solutions.

The conservation of a 1913 U.S. flag that originally belonged to Worthen Post No. 128 of the Grand Army of the Republic in Murphysboro, Illinois, provides a case study in complementary interventive and investigative conservation methods. “Before” and “after” images demonstrate the success of the project.

All European powers that explored and claimed territory in New England used flags; the English colonists transplanted extensive flag traditions to the New World. The varying use of militia flags, the excision and restoration of the “idolatrous cross”, and the evolution of the Pine Tree flag provide compelling chapters in colonial history.