Today, June 14, is Flag Day. It was on Aug. 3, 1949. that President Harry S. Truman signed an Act of Congress designating June 14 as National Flag Day each year, according to usflag.com.

It all began on the 108th anniversary of the official adoption of the Stars and Stripes in 1885 by a schoolteacher in Fredonia, Wis. BJ Cigrand requested that students observe the flag on "flag birthday," June 14. Ceremonies were planned in the years to follow in New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

It was three decades later that an official Proclamation by President Woodrow Wilson was made on May 30, 1916.

It is not known who designed the first Stars and Stripes, according to usflag.com. Congressman Francis Hopkinson is most likely to have designed it, and a few historians believe a seamstress from Philadelphia, Betsy Ross, made the first one.

On June 14, 1777, the first Flag Act passed by the Continental Congress to establish an official flag for the new nation "Resolved, that the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation."

President Monroe signed the act on April 4, 1818, that provided 13 stripes and one star for each state, to be added to the flag on the Fourth of July after the admission of each new state.

In an executive order by President William Howard Taft dated June 24, 1912, the flag's proportions were established, and arrangement of the stars in six horizontal rows of eight each, a single point of each star point upward, was set.

In 1959, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower's executive order on Aug. 21, it was provided stars to be arranged in nine rows staggered horizontally and 11 rows staggered vertically.

Please remember, when your flag should no longer be flown -- because it is torn, faded or tattered -- to bring it to your local VFW or Legion and they will have a dignified flag burning ceremony.

The sun is shining and the flags are waving ... Think Happy Thoughts.

A waving flag on a summer day. Lisa Marie/Townsquare Media
A waving flag on a summer day. Lisa Marie/Townsquare Media
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