06/14/2026
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸June 14th is Flag Day in the United States. The holiday commemorates the adoption of the American flag on June 14, 1777, when the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution establishing the design of the Stars and Stripes.
A flag of this design was first carried into battle on September 11, 1777, in the Battle of the Brandywine.
The American flag was first saluted by foreign naval vessels on
February 14, 1778, when the Ranger, bearing the Stars and Stripes and under the command of Captain Paul Jones, arrived in a French port.
The flag first flew over a foreign territory in early 1778 at Nassau, Bahama Islands, where Americans captured a British fort.
Observance of the adoption of the flag was not soon in coming, however. Although there are many claims to the first official observance of Flag Day, all but one took place more than an entire century after the flag’s adoption in 1777. The first claim was from a Hartford, Conn., celebration during the first summer of 1861.
In the late 1800s, schools all over the United States held Flag Day programs to contribute to the Americanization of immigrant children, and the observance caught on with individual communities.
