Italy (basil, pasta, and tomatoes)

To promote the Sydney International Food Festival, ad agency WHYBIN created a neat series of flags made from the countries' traditional food. Some examples:

Australia (meat pie)

Brazil (banana leaf, limes, pineapple, and passion fruit)

India (curries, rice, and a pappadum wafer)

South Korea (kimbap and sauces)

Lebanon (lavash, fattoush, and a herb sprig)

More at The Kitchn blog: Link - via Good

What do you think your country's food flag should be made out of? The American flag's red stripes should definitely be made out of bacon!

Caity Weaver at The Hairpin took a really close look at all the US state flags to find out what was unique about each of them. And turned those things into snark.

1. Sometimes state flags run out of red marker before they’re finished. (Tennessee)

Check out what she said about your state. Link -via Metafilter

On this Flag Day, we have the story of the Star-Spangled Banner from the Smithsonian. This is the American flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. Francis Scott Key was inspired by this particular flag when he wrote our national anthem in 1813.

Succeeding generations loved and honored the Stars and Stripes, but this flag in particular provided a unique connection to the national narrative. Once it was moved to the Smithsonian Institution in 1907, it remained on almost continuous display. After almost 200 years of service, the flag had slowly deteriorated almost to the point of no return. Removed from exhibit in 1998 for a conservation project that cost about $7 million, the Star-Spangled Banner, as it had become known, returns to center stage this month with the reopening of the renovated National Museum of American History on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Read the story of what happened to the flag from the time it was constructed in Baltimore to its permanent installation at the Smithsonian Institution. Link

(Image credit: Smithsonian Institution)

Sacrebleu! France has just passed a rule stating that anyone insulting the French national flag could be fined €1,500:

France has introduced a rule to protect its national flag from insult after a photo of a man wiping his bottom with the tricolour caused outrage.

Under the rule, anyone caught trying to "destroy, damage or use the flag in a degrading manner" could face a fine of 1,500 euros (£1,250; $1,900).

The offending picture won a prize in a photo contest in the southern city of Nice in March. It was later published in a free national newspaper.

Link

Using a list of countries generated by The World Factbook database, flags of countries fetched from Wikipedia are analysed by a custom made python script to calculate the proportions of colours on each of them. That is then translated on to a piechart using another python script. The proportions of colours on all unique flags are used to finally generate a piechart of proportions of colours for all the flags combined.

Embedded on top is a screencap of a portion of the display, alphabetically arranged (Afghanistan, Albania…); the original at the artist’s website will display the name of the country when a mouse is passed over the pie chart.  The larger pie chart on the bottom is a composite of all the colors from all of the flags.

Via The Life and Times of Michael5000, who notes that the color violet/lavender/purple is notably absent from world flags (as is gray).

Just in time for Fourth of July, here’s American Bacon by Chris Hanson of Pocket Bacon. Who says that pork products can’t be patriotic?