Happy Flag Day!

FOX: Look out for the red, white, and blue this week as the United States celebrates Flag Day. Here’s what you should know about the special occasion, which pays tribute to the Stars and Stripes on June 14.

Why is Flag Day celebrated? 

Flag Day honors a June 14, 1777, resolution from the Second Continental Congress, which called for an official United States flag.

The resolution called for the flag to “be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

What is the history behind Flag Day? 

A number of figures in the 1800s led the charge to recognize the importance of the flag.

Hartford, Conn., resident George Morris in 1861 got his town “to undertake a patriotic celebration on behalf of the Union,” according to a Philly.com report, which said the idea failed to become popular.

Flag Day was unofficially observed 16 years later on June 14, 1877, the Department of Defense said in a blog post. The flag waved nationwide from public buildings for the occasion, a report from 2011 said.

One of the more famous figures was Wisconsin teacher Bernard Cigrand. In 1885, he put a flag in an inkwell and tasked his students to write essays about the flag, the National Flag Day Foundation says online. Cigrand would spend decades championing the flag, and even became the editor-in-chief of the “American Standard,” a magazine devoted to American emblems, according to the foundation.   MORE HERE