State Flags 101

Everybody knows the American flag, right? You probably know a number of other national flags as well (how many of them you know, that depends, though it should be assumed that you at least know the major ones like France, Japan, China, Canada, etc.)

State flags are a little trickier- though there are a few instantly-recognizable ones like Ohio, Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado- but shouldn't actually be too much more difficult because, although a lot of American state flags look alike, a lot of them also have the name of the state printed right on them. My state, Wisconsin, is one such state.

But it's understandable if the average person can't name some of them.

The average person.

If you make your living writing about politics- say, if you're Donovan Slack of Politico- the bar gets raised a little bit. You really ought to know your state flags at that point.

This is the flag of Wisconsin.

(source: Flags of the World)

This is not the flag of a local union called "Wisconsin 1848".

The article has since been taken down from Politico-- which is why I link to Gawker, who snagged a cached version of it.

This has been your entry-level geography lesson for the day. For those of you who already have the state flags down, as your reward, you instead get to have a world map showing what languages people are Tweeting in.