Hey Flag!— North America

Hey flag! Tell us about yourself. " I am the Mexican flag. I have three strips, with the Mexican coat of arms in the middle stripe. The coat of arms has a very special meaning because it symbolizes the Aztec people who lived in Mexico long ago. According to legend, the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli told his people to settle where they saw an eagle sitting on a cactus and eating a snake.

After hundreds of years of wandering, they saw the eagle, the cactus, and the snake on an island in a lake. They built their city there, and that place is now Mexico City. " There is a funny story about my red stripe. When the Mexican people first made the flag, they wanted to use purple, not red. Purple represented Spain, which is where most of Mexico’s people came from .

But they could not find any purple cloth, so they had to use red. ” Hey, flag! Tell us about yourself. " I am the flag of the United States of America. Many people call me the Stars and Stripes. I have fifty stars, one for each of the states. I also have thirteen stripes, seven red and six white, for each of the original states.

I have changed over the years . I didn’t always have fifty stars . Every time a new state was added, I got another star. This is how I looked in 1777. " I was first sewn by Betsy Ross. President George Washington asked her to sew me . She finished the flag in early June of 1776, just a month before the Declaration of Independence was read in Independence Hall.

" The American people are very patriotic. Many Americans see me as the greatest symbol of their nation . Every morning millions of schoolchildren recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. ” Hey, flag! Tell us about yourself. " I am the Canadian flag . You can call me the Maple Leaf. I did not become the Canadian flag until 1965.

Before that, Canadians used the Union Jack, which is the flag of Great Britain. " But the people of Canada wanted to have their own flag. The maple leaf has been a symbol of Canada for a very long time. In 1860 the Prince of Wales came to Canada for a visit. Everyone in Toronto came out into the streets to greet him.