Stories, history, and curiosities about flags, countries, and the world.
Green, yellow, red. Across Africa, these three colours appear again and again. Their story leads back to Ethiopia, a victory that became a symbol, and the African independence movements of the 20th century.
Black, white, green, red. Four colours that return from Jordan to Yemen, and whose story begins with an uprising in the Arabian desert.
Describing a flag out loud is harder than it looks, unless you know the words for it. Flag experts use a precise vocabulary, most of it borrowed from medieval heraldry. Here is the essential toolkit, one term at a time.
Watch the flags parade at an Olympic ceremony. Before long, a strange feeling sets in: you could swear you have seen them before.
Almost every flag is a rectangle, but almost none share the same one. A flag's proportions are a real design choice, shaped by imitation, by law, and by the wish to stand apart. Here is how ratios work, and why they vary so much.
France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Thailand, Chile, Australia, Cuba, Norway, the Netherlands. The same three colours, over and over. Not a coincidence, but three separate histories that happened to collide.
Purple was the colour of emperors, and it is almost entirely absent from the world's flags. The explanation involves a Mediterranean sea snail, an eye-watering price, and spectacularly bad timing.
New Zealand spent 26 million dollars, ran two national votes, sifted through 10,292 public designs, and ended up keeping the flag it already had. Changing a flag turns out to be one of the hardest things a country can attempt.
There are no two identical national flags in the world, but some come uncomfortably close. Here are ten pairs that fool almost everyone, and the one detail that separates each.
Imagine traveling halfway across the world to represent your country at the Olympic Games, only to discover that another nation has shown up carrying... your flag.
From the vexillum of the Roman cavalry to the flags of today's movements: the story of a modern discipline devoted to an ancient human practice.
