they used to add a stripe for each new state until they realized it would get too crowded so they kept the adding stars but made the striped for colonies
Random fact of the day: the Malayan flag originally had 11 stripes - one for each of the Malayan states... what is now peninsular Malaysia. This increased to 14 stripes when Malaysia was formed in 1963, when Malaya merged with Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore to form Malaysia. Following the separation with Singapore, the 14th stripe now represents the Federal Territories.
Wait...does Greece really have nine stripes? Or does it have five blue stripes on a solid white background....or four white stripes on a blue background...mind = blown :)
Woah, easy there. Everything is gonna be alright. By law the national flag of Greece is "cyan and white, it is made up of nine (9) stripes equal in width, of which five (5) are cyan and four (4) are white so that the upper and lower stripes are cyan and the others in between are white."
Umm, first, I don't see how that phrase indicates they got the joke at all. Second, the detailed serious explanation indicates they did not, in fact, get the joke.
I would argue that Greece's flag has 10 stripes, the 9 that go across the whole side/the right of the cross, and the 1 that is in the white cross in the canton.
I wouldn't. One of the "stripes" that go the whole way actually have a bulb at the end so it doesn't count, which means they included the canton stripe.