Flag Day...thanks to Wisconsite Bernard J. Cigrand.

In 1885, a Waubeka, WI school teacher named Bernard J. Cigrand placed a 10 inch, 38- star flag in a bottle on his desk then assigned essays on the flag and its significance.

In June 1886 he made his first public proposal for the annual observance of the birth of the flag when he wrote an article titled, “The Fourteenth of June” in the old Chicago Argus newspaper.

On the third Saturday in June, 1894, the first general public school children’s celebration of Flag Day in Chicago was held in Douglas, Garfield, Humboldt, Lincoln, and Washington Parks, with more than 300,000 children participating. It's been celebrated on June 14th ever since.

The rest is, as they say, history.

(NOTE: Great Moments in Flag Day history. On June 14, 1908, Theodore Roosevelt was dining outside Philadelphia, when he noticed a man wiping his nose with what he thought was the American Flag. In outrage, Roosevelt picked up a small wooden rod and began to whip the man for "defacing the symbol of America." After about five or six strong whacks, he noticed that the man was not wiping his nose with a flag, but with a blue handkerchief with white stars. Upon realization of this, he apologized to the man, but hit him once more for making him "riled up with national pride.")