Flag of USA (51 stars)

The USA Flag is perhaps the most recognisable in the world.

Depending on your perspective it can symbolise the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Or it’s the face of everything that’s wrong with the world or your country.

So when angry business owners in Moscow began using the flag as a doormat last month to protest US sanctions on Russia, many Muscovites were happy to oblige.

Given the past and present anti-American sentiment in Russia they may need more doormats before long.

But will the US flag soon need more stars?

It is widely known that the 50 stars on the US flag represent the states.

When the Stars and Stripes was adopted in 1777, there were 13 states (then colonies), thus a 13-star flag.

Then as each new state joined the union, a star was added to the flag.

The current 50-star flag, acknowledging Hawaii’s admission, was unveiled on 4 July 1960.

A 51-star US flag

Should a 51st state ever become a reality, proposed designs already exist for the updated flag.

The first resembles today’s descending rows of stars [6-5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6].

On the 51-star version, the rows would descend: 9-8-9-8-9-8.

A second draft of the 51-star flag sees the row pattern altered to: 6-7-8-9-8-7-6.

Puerto Rico’s pro-statehood New Progressive Party has designed its own 51-star flag that sees concentric rings of five, 10, 15 and 20 stars around a central star.

On the same day as the 2012 US presidential election, Puerto Rico held a status referendum on its current relationship with America.

Fifty-four per cent of those who voted said Puerto Rico should not continue its current territorial status, while 61 per cent preferred US statehood as the alternative.

Puerto Rico became an unincorporated US territory after the 1898 Spanish-American War, and its citizens gained US citizenship in 1917.

But Puerto Ricans cannot vote in presidential elections unless they live in the United States, which also controls the island’s foreign policy.

In January last year President Obama approved $2.5m for a statehood referendum in Puerto Rico.

Meanwhile state-side there is a campaign to grant statehood to the capital, Washington DC.

Plans also exist for a 52-, 53-, 54- and even a 55-star flag should the need arise.

Bonus fact: The 13 colonies that declared independence from Great Britain in 1776 are represented by the 13 stripes on the current US flag.

_{Alex Crouch, Flag Institute accredited journalist (2015/16).}