STRIPES 6 STARS OF REBELLION

EVERY American schoolboy knows that Betsy Ross made the first U.S. flag for George Washington and the Continental Congress in 1777. It makes a pretty story, but historians are not so sure of its accuracy. Through the years, they have searched for evidence to support a variety of theories concerning the origin of the U.S. flag —that it derived from British and Dutch flags, that it evolved out of designs of the different colonies, that it came from George Washington's coat of arms. But today, all that is known is that on June 14,...