From a Mental Floss article about the selection of the Canadian flag in 1965, the flag pictured above was the preferred flag of then Prime Minister Lester Pearson but proved unpopular with pretty much everyone else. This burn from an Albertan youngster is priceless:
“I don’t like the three maple leaves on the white background… the single maple leaf looks better. As I am only 10 [I] will have to look at it longer than Mr. Pearson.”
Love this ad for Norwegian Airlines, very clever.
Someone tweeted this photo back on Remembrance Day, I think it was captioned “The most badass war photo ever” or similar and it is a pretty impressive shot. It appears to be a reindeer in the middle of a warzone looking towards the action, and even better this photo was taken during Operation Renntier (Reindeer), pretty amazing, no?
Well actually yeah, no. Though saying it’s a fake seems harsh because it’s still a great photo, it’s just a composite.
Yevgeny Khaldei was a Red Army photographer during the second World War. During the bombing of Operation Renntier:
…a reindeer (later named Yasha) came out to be with the soldiers–the shellshocked creature didn’t want to be alone. During one of the air raids,Khaldei took the reindeer shot, but it wasn’t as dramatic as he assumed, so he later superimposed British Hawker Hurricanes, flown by RAF pilots to relieve Murmansk, and an exploding bomb to form a composite image.
Khaldei is best known for this photo of the Soviet flag raised over the Reichstag in Berlin but this is also a fake, in that it’s a reconstruction, not the original event (much the like the image it tried to emulate).
As suggested by Senor Wignall:
Thinking about it a far more sensible way to do it would be to just take the cool parts of the cool flags and construct an uber-flag .
My 5 minute lunchtime effort is: Eagle eating Snake + Two Headed Eagle + Dragon + Maasai Spears & Shield + Two Snowlions + Man behing beheaded:
I think if the rules could be bent to allow non-national flags there could be some awesome mashups as provincial flags and royal standards get all the cool stuff. That said if we were to allow them there’s only one flag we’d need:
It’s a bear holding a freakin waraxe. Thank you Yaroslavl Oblast.
A composite of all world flags weighted by population (and tweaked slightly to make it a little less red)
I wonder if it’s the sort of thing where your your flag just jumps out at you – I can clearly see the Union Flag but can’t see other more populous nations, though it won’t help that nine of them are tricolours.
It’s almost as good as the Earthican Flag.
