Following on from the flags in the Elephant in the Room thread, I thought it might be fun/interesting to take a look at flags and their history over the years.

This is the Gadsden Flag "Don't tread on me" from 1775 at the beginning of the American War of Independence:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsden_flag

From the same period, the Join or Die flag for the American colonies;

The home made "Come and take it" flag from the Texan Revolution. The "it" being a small cannon which had been provided for defence against Indian attack to the citizens of Gonzales, TX, and which they refused to give up when summoned to by the Mexican authorities;

Flag of the Eureka Stockade;

To err is human, to arrr is pirate.

One version of Bartholomew Roberts' flag;

Dickin's banner;

Oh bugger ferval, you beat me to it. Sheldon & Amy's Fun With Flags was the first thing that sprang to mind.

A dragon in the centre of the  UJ would be great - unless of course it looks as if Wales wants independence........

Here's a site created by someone at the University of Otago:

World Flags Graded

In it the flags of the world are graded aesthetically with points deducted for various violations etc. It's quite funny.

Very amusing Viz, I like the comment:"Some countries' flags look like tea towels. If you'd rather be using the flag as a tea towel, and your tea towel as the flag,
give it an F."

Hence the F (fail) rating for the flag of Guam:



... and the comment: "Name of country written on flag in ugly typeface. Notice that the M of Guam is larger than the other letters. I have given it this high a grade because it would actually make quite a nice tea towel."

It's more bathmat than tea towel.

An article about the Draco standard of the Late Roman Period;

http://www.fectio.org.uk/articles/draco.htm

Bring on the Wessex dragon!

Wessex Dragon as shown on the Bayeaux Tapestry, Priscilla;



and a modern illustration, which shows the windsock design more clearly;

Triceratops wrote:

the windsock

I met a group of tourists wandering around town the other day on a walking tour. Their guide held aloft a stick to which was tied not a dragon windsock or a ribbon but a flag. I couldn’t, however, work out where the flag was from. As she had been speaking Spanish, however, I guessed that it was from a Spanish-speaking country or province. “Is that the flag of Catalonia?” I enquired casually even though there was no yellow in the flag so I knew that it probably wasn’t. “Non.” came the short response from the tour guide and there was a mischievous twinkle in her eye which indicated that teacher-like she wasn’t going to make this easy for me. “Is it Chile?” I suggested. “Non.” came the reply with a shake of the head. I noted that the flag contained a triangle in the hoist which doesn’t feature on the Chilean flag. “Cuba?” I then proffered. “Non. Non.” She replied with an indignant tut. And that suggestion also prompted sighs and groans from the group. Close, but no cigar I thought to myself. It was obviously a Caribbean or Central American country but which was well used to having its flag mistaken for the Cuban one. In fact the flag was almost identical to the Cuban flag only with the colours inverted. I couldn’t decide whether my next guess should be Panama or Costa Rica or Santo Domingo, when I was put out of my misery by one of her group who called out that it was the flag of Puerto Rico (i.e. none of those which I had thought of). This elicited a cheer from the group but a scowl from the guide whose sport was thus spoiled. “Ah!” I exclaimed “Puerto Rico!” and (knowing nothing about the island) gave them a dopey thumbs-up. “Very good.” I added, “Great flag!” and off they went with smiles and waves to their next destination.



(flag of Catalonia)


(flag of Chile)


(flag of Cuba)


(flag of Puerto Rico)


I’ve subsequently read up a little about the island to discover it has quite a varied history. In the 20th and 21st centuries it has been known for periodically holding referenda on the question of either accession to and membership of the USA or else independence. Whatever the result of a referendum, however, the outcome always seems to be sticking with the in-between status quo - i.e. free association with the US. The original ‘neverendum’ perhaps?

Puerto Rico, along with the Philippines and Guam (the one with the tea-towel/bathmat flag), was ceded by Spain to the US following the Spanish-American War of 1898. Prior to that it had been a Spanish colony for 400 years. In the 1590s the island was attacked by 'el corsario ingles notorio Francisco Draque' – the notorious English pirate Francis Drake. El Draque (the dragon) as the Spanish nicknamed him, would henceforth be invoked by mothers in Puerto Rico and elsewhere as a bogeyman with which to threaten misbehaving children. One wonders if the Puerto Rican tour party have time for a trip down to my father’s hometown of Tavistock in Devon to see the birthplace of El Draque and his statue there. Being in the homeland of the sea dogs, however, they might be forgiven for thinking that England’s flag should be (rather than the Cross of St George) perhaps indeed a dragon windsock or else (and with due acknowledgement of Welshman Bartholomew Roberts mentioned by Trike upthread) maybe a Jolly Roger.

With it being St George's Day - la Diada de Sant Jordi - and he being the patron saint of Catalunya as well as England, I hope you'll excuse my pedantry ... but what you've posted above is not the flag of Catalunya but rather the more politically-charged and provocative 'Senyera Estelada' (literally 'the starred banner') of the Catalan independence movement. That flag was devised by the Catalan nationalist politician Vicenç Albert Ballester in about 1918, based on the old Catalan flag and with the white star in the blue triangle at the hoist, which was indeed inspired by the flags of Cuba and Puerto Rico which had then both recently become independent from Spain. However even the self-proclaimed secessionist 'Catalan Republic' of 2017 declined to adopt the Senyera Estelada as its national flag, and so the official flag of Catalunya remains the simple red and gold of the old Kingdom of Aragon:



Within the modern Kingdom of Spain the flag of Aragon is the same barred red and gold but to distinguish it from the flag of Catalunya it is often clearly emblazoned with the royal Aragonese arms:



Within the French bit of ancient Catalonia/Catalunya (that's the bit of the medieval Kingdom of Majorca north of the Pyrenean mountain chain that was eventually ceded to France in 1659 by the Treaty of the Pyrenees and so became the French County of Roussillon), the Catalan banner is still often flown outside official and other major civic buildings. Here in French Catalonia it's usual to see the red-and-gold flag flying outside town halls, post offices, fire-stations, tourist offices, museums, schools, hospitals, police stations, at Perpignan City Hall, the University, the airport and outside the port authority/customs buildings at Collioure, Port-Vendres, Argélès and Saint-Cyprian etc, ... but always alongside the French tricolour and the EU flag. However in these situations it is never the starred Catalan flag (the Senyera Estelada) as that is not officially recognised, plus it might also suggest sympathy for political independence of the wider 'Països Catalans' (Catalan lands) and thus, mon dieu, imply a local desire for independence from France.

Nevertheless I do often see the starred Senyera being defiantly flown from houses and private businesses. However I suspect that's largely because if you are the sort of person that wants to declare your Catalan heritage by flying a large Catalan flag from the balcony of your flat, then you are also more likely to be an active supporter of Catalan independence; hence the choice of the lone-star version of the flag. I get the feeling (though I may well be wrong) that most people here in French Catalonia are more cautious about all this, so while they are generally very proud of their French/Catalan heritage and have empathy with their fellow Catalans south of the border, they mostly seem circumspect about openly declaring their desire - or otherwise - for any political unification/independence. But then I'm not Catalan.

Anyway here are the French, EU and (unstarred) Catalan flags happily flying together and with official approval outside the Préfecture (City Hall) in Perpignan (France):



There are several different theories for where the Catalan flag originally came from but the most colourful is that when Ramon Berenguer II, the Count of Barcelona, was mortally wounded while hunting in 1082 - supposedly murdered by his darstardly twin brother - on his death-bed he defiantly stuck his fingers into the bloody wound in his chest and drew them down his yellow shield, creating 'Els Quatre Dits de Sang', or 'The Four Fingers of Blood' that appear as four red stripes on the flag. Berenguer's tomb in Barcelona cathedral does indeed display what are throught to be the earliest representations of the striped red and gold shield design: