Argentina
South America
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About
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern cone of South America. It covers an area of 2,780,085 km2 (1,073,397 mi2), making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourth-largest country in the Americas, and the eighth-largest country in the world. Argentina shares the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, and is also bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. Argentina is a federal state subdivided into twenty-three provinces, and one autonomous city, which is the federal capital and largest city of the nation, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system. Argentina claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, and a part of Antarctica.
Read more on Wikipedia →The Flag
History
The national flag of the Argentine Republic, often referred to as the Argentine flag, is a triband, composed of three equally wide horizontal bands coloured baby blue and white. There are multiple interpretations on the reasons for those colors. The flag was created by Manuel Belgrano, in line with the creation of the Cockade of Argentina, and was first raised at the city of Rosario on 27 February 1812, during the Argentine War of Independence. The National Flag Memorial was later built on the site. The First Triumvirate did not approve the use of the flag, but the Asamblea del Año XIII allowed the use of the flag as a war flag. It was the Congress of Tucumán which finally designated it as the national flag in 1816. A yellow Sun of May was added to the center in 1818.
Design & symbolism
Popular belief attributes the colors to those of the sky, clouds and the sun; some anthems to the flag like "Aurora" or "Salute to the flag" state so as well. However, historians usually disregard this idea, and attribute them to loyalty towards the House of Bourbon. After the May Revolution, the first times of the Argentine War of Independence, the Triumvirate claimed to be acting on behalf of the Spanish King Ferdinand VII, who was prisoner of Napoleon Bonaparte during the Peninsular War. Whether such loyalty was real or a trick to conceal independentism is a topic of dispute. The creation of a new flag with those colors would have been then a way to denote autonomy, while keeping the relations with the captive king alive.[citation needed] The sun is called the Sun of May because it is a replica of an engraving on the first Argentine coin, approved in 1813, whose value was eight escudos (one Spanish dollar). It has 16 straight and 16 waved sunbeams. In 1978 the sun color was specified to be golden yellow (amarillo oro), to have an inner diameter of 10 cm, and an outer diameter of 25 cm (the diameter of the sun equals 5⁄6 the height of the white stripe. The sun's face is 2⁄5…
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