With President Bush on his State visit to Britain, there are a lot of Union Flags and Stars and Stripes hanging about. Admittedly, there aren't that many in the crowds, who are carrying things more along the lines of posters saying "GO HOEM BUSH YOU AER EVAL", but still, there has been some attempt to drum up some support.

Anyway, this is somewhat removed from the point of this post, which is to ask: why do so many countries choose red, white and blue as their national colours? Although I only know of Britain and the USA as countries who use the colours themselves, independent of their flags, to represent their countries, there is still a big list of countries whose national flags consist of nothing but these three colours.

The countries that I could find with this particular quirk are:

Australia
Bouvet Island (no idea where it is, but it's got the Norwegian flag)
Burma (I think)
Cambodia (not sure, but it looks like it)
Cocos Islands (Australian flag)
Cook Islands
Costa Rica
Croatia (pretty much)
Cuba
Czech Republic
Dominican Republic (might be orange, not red)
Faroe Islands
France
French Guiana
French Southern Territories
Guadeloupe
Haiti (excepting the central crest)
Heard and McDonald Islands (Australian flag)
Iceland
North Korea
Laos
Liberia
Luxembourg
Mayotte (where the hell's that?)
Myanmar
Nepal
Netherlands
Netherlands Antilles
New Caledonia
New Zealand
Norway
Panama
Paraguay (excepting the small central crest)
Puerto Rico
Reunion
Russia
Samoa
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands
Taiwan
Thailand
Tokelau (New Zealand flag)
Turks and Caicos Islands (New Zealand flag)
United Kingdom
United States
Wallis and Futuna Islands (French flag)
Yugoslavia

Quite an impressive list, don't you think? Four permanent members of the UN Security Council and umpteen other countries of varying international significance. So why are these particular colours quite so revered? Have they popped up in some myth that makes them highly significant?

Si-"Or is it just a fairly pointless coincidence?"-gi