More like the *Austria-Hungary disorder/effect* This is a whole new term about the manipulation of the majority of people by using a convincing yet fake flag of a country on a real nation. The Austria-Hungary effect is new and dangerous and is currently taking its toll on all of our lives.
The problem with Wikipedia isn't that it's necessarily unreliable, it's that when there is any false information, it spreads around as fact pretty quickly
Actually the first can apply to political articles of Wikipedia since it just parrots what most mainstream news says, not even questioning their latest... well let's just say fabrications and deception
That says it, basically. Overconfident delusional people (or malicious.. I'm not a mind-reader) thinking they're in the right when they're not really, people agreeing with them because they're used to the thing they made (wrongly), thing stays up, people agree thing is fact.. thing is not fact.
Yeah. That is the Wikipedia effect. But this one is a special case for many psychologists. This one is the Austria-Hungary effect, and it involves basically convincing people that the fake flag is the real flag. They did this for years!
Man, learning about Wikipedia editing wars is honestly hilarious. Those editors take their roles really seriously, it’s also fun to learn about story’s like this. Really good video
Believe me, as a Wikipedia editor, the political editors ESPECIALLY have no lives and it's pretty much a group of factions warring each other over what can be the true "consensus"
as silly as it may sound it’s probably a good thing they take stuff seriously, considering their decisions can affect public consciousness like we saw in the video
@@Ethan11892 those territories were hungarians since ages before the Habsburgs. The submission started with we got rekt by the ottomans, and when the HRE liberated Hungary, they forget to leave.
This happened to literally every Vietnamese dynasty, where they got fictional flags that got plastered on every page If I recall correctly, one of those fictional flags is literally flying over the tomb of the first emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty
Wow. Millions of people have always known that as the Austro-Hungarian flag, all video games use that flag, virtually any content you can find about Austria Hungary on the internet uses that flag, I have never heard about this before. It's incredible how much a wikipedia page can deceive so many people, thank you for making this video, looking forward to the next.
I always thought black/yellow flag was common knowledge. I am actually surprised to learn that the "vertical sandwich flag" was used irl at all since I always believed it to be fan made.
@@andrewbattleship2420 AFAIK Victoria uses black and yellow for the Habsburg Empire, not for the Dual Monarchy. Paradox games might have been part of the misinformation here. Since PDX games like to have new flags for countries that undergo important political changes, using black-yellow for the Habsburg Empire, and then, when the 1868 Compromise happens, renaming the state and changing the flag to the double-tricolor merchant flag is a good way to give visual feedback to the player. But together with Wikipedia it will give players the false impression that this is what the actual flag was.
My grandpa had this 1970 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. When I was young I was interested in flags (still am), so that I would check its flag pages often. It also had this civil ensign for Austria-Hungary flag. I grew up thinking like that. The perception may be way older than Wikipedia.
I agree this error must have preceded Wikipedia, although I think Wikipedia helped popularize it further across the internet and in the popular conscious. As I've written in other comments, one theory I have is that because this flag was flown on ships traveling to other countries, it may have become commonly associated with Austria-Hungary abroad, despite not being widely used or seen in actual Austria-Hungary. This is why while I found posters, postcards, etc with the civil ensign on it, they tend to have all been printed in the United States, whereas documents actually printed in Austria-Hungary do not use the ensign. Perhaps this extended to Encyclopedia Britannica as well.
@@FlagAnthem the purpose of the flag design is more likely based in sea usage. The only non quadrilateral flag is Nepal, a landlocked mountain country.
As an Italian (my great grandfather fought the austro Hungarians in WW1) i was always very interested about our greatest enemy. I was confused about this issue too, my great grandpa for example, had many pictures of the Battle of the Piave River, in one photo you can see a captured black and yellow flag, (although it's hard to notice since the photos are black and white)
You haven’t thought your flag might be a variant of the official design? Generally, churches fly rectangular Vatican flags, which are supposed to be square officially, mainly because they’re easier to get.
This reminds me of how the battle flag of the Confederate States of America has become the most prominent flag of that nation in popular culture, despite it never being the official flag.
I think it's because at one point most people's exposure to confederate symbols was through watching Battle of Gettysburg re-enactments, in which the confederate side fights under the flag of the unit that was in that battle. So people started mistakenly thinking that that was the main flag of the CSA, and from then on it caught on as the symbol of the south
The further interesting point is that that flag was already cemented in confederate popular opinion as the best symbol of their “nation”. It likely would have become the national flag eventually.
@@FlagAnthem Hey, if those external experts want to edit things, they can. There is literally nothing stopping them from becoming an editor. Wikipedia wouldn't pay them to become an editor because directly editing an article you've been paid to edit is against community rules, but they can edit anything. As for fact checks? There's a bunch of internal systems for fact checks and every contentious claim is supposed to be cited to a source. There's a giant backlog on improperly sourced claims and articles, but you can verify anything that does have a citation. Higher-quality articles (good and featured articles) go through a peer review process to receive that status, which doubly acts as fact-checking.
Thank you so much for this video. For years the mystery of the Austro Hungarian flag has absolutely consumed me. I have wasted countless hours of my life searching for photographs of a real Austro Hungarian navel ensign flag dated between 1867 and 1918 to no avail. I've always known that the Austro Hungarian empire did not have an official state flag but the mystery of why we use the navel ensign in popular culture has always confused me. This video has given me context to how the navel ensign came into public conciousness yet I still cannot find an actual image of a real flag used during the 19th and 20th centuries.
@Kaiser Franz Joseph True. Plus the only evidience of this flag existing before 1918 that I could find were pictures of the flag on stamps and match boxes. Wikipedia didn't create the flag but the million dollar question is if there is any proof of a physical navel ensign flag being used in the old AHE.
A good place to start might be Austro-Hungarian shipping companies, like Österreichischer Lloyd. Looking that company up you can sort of make out the civil ensign being flown in some of the black-and-white photos of their ships: earlofcruise.blogspot.com/2017/07/history-one-of-earliest-steam-ship.html It seems to me like the civil ensign was probably pretty rare in Austria-Hungary, as most primary sources actually produced in the country use the other flags mentioned in the video or even the war ensign over the civil ensign, but it's possible that from seeing the civil ensign regularly in their ports (and because it intuitively makes sense as a national flag), foreign publishers picked up the civil ensign and helped popularize it. This might explain why although there's a bunch of postcards, books, trinkets, etc with the civil ensign, most of them are printed in other countries (e.g. the picture at 3:32 in the video was printed in New York). In the debate on Wikipedia, a lot of people were citing the existence of those printed materials as proof the civil ensign was a sort of de facto flag, ignoring where the materials came from.
@@nojrants Thank you so much for this source its nice to actually see photographic use of the flag within the empire. I can finally put a long lost mystery of mine to rest. Now maybe the mystery will pivet too if there are any suriving authentic flags still around today. I know there is one picture of a tiny Austro Hungarian flag on Google images but I don't think there is a verifiable date to its creation. Also just want to say that both of your videos are great, really enjoyed them both.
@@dylanlovesqueentoomuch8720 AH propaganda did use it as well. We have de facto but not de iure national anthems (Sweden, or Italy until 2019), why not de facto national flags? Of course an encyclopedia should know better
The Vatican flag also had the incorrect hue of yellow in the coat of arms. Someone assumed it was the same hue as the yellow on the left banner. This has since been fixed.
I was 100% aware of austria hungary not having an actual common flag/used mostly the black and red, yet I never actually internalised that the most common flag portrayal is actually wrong for some reason. I just went with the flow
@@FlagAnthem It's not exaggerated. The civil ensign was always just that, not officially associated with the country. The Austrian empire predates the idea of nationalism, and even after the nationalistic ideas of the 18th centuries spread across Europe, The Austrian Empire was simply too diverse. By the time the Austria-Hungary compromise came around, it was either that or the Habsburgs lost the majority of their empire or they ran this stupid idea of a dual monarchy system, but not a single soul in the empire ever considered themselves "Austria-Hungarian" thus it really never needed an official flag that represented more than one part of the nation at a time. The civil ensign was only ever created in order to represent stuff like their navy, since both Austria and Hungary shared the same military, etc. But the country was too short live to ever build a national identity, and like in previous centuries, they were really just considered to be the Habsburg empire.
@@FlagAnthem but you still don't conflate a national flag with it's navy or merchant flag. You wouldn't depict the UK with it's red merchant flag or it's white navy flag either
I think the Austro-Hungarian flag is misrepresented in strategy games too. I know Vicky 2 and Hoi4 use the error further cementing its widespread usage.
It's not really an error. The black and yellow flag was a flag used for the Habsburg monarchy but not the duel-monarchy. If you look at a map for the time, Hugary and Austria are a single state, and the Wikipedia flag was used as a civil ensign.
Man this video is refreshing, I remember getting into vexillology and heraldry around 2015 and slowly coming to the intensely frustrating realization that a lot of flags and arms that people were making fun of were just bad Wikipedia renderings rather than intrinsically bad designs.
I had an assignment in middle school where we got a WWI country and acted like that country in a mock war. Part of the assignment was to create a flag. My group got Austria-Hungary. We began to make the civil ensign because we saw all the search results saying that flag was the offical flag. When our teacher noticed it, she said "thats not the flag of Austria-Hungary". We had to change it to the black-yellow flag for the assignment. So yeah, Wikipedia almost made my group get a bad grade. Another fun fact, the group that got Germany also made a similar mistake, except they made the WWII German flag. Yeah...
The flag of the Empire of Brazil was also the victim of an edit war. Ironically, neither the old version that was removed, nor the one currently being displayed on the page are historically accurate. As with the other cases, if you Google "Flag of the Empire of Brazil" most results will show the old, wrong, Wikipedia flag
Qual é a correta mesmo? sempre fiquei confuso sobre isso, além do fato da bandeira imperial ter realmente mudado com o tempo pela criação de mais províncias
I want to add that because of Wikipedia, the understanding of the flag of Russia 1991-1993 has changed. According to the law, it was in the ratio of 1:2 and was white-blue-red, however, due to the fact that the word "lazurny" (the poetic name of blue) was used, Wikipedia, and its users began to think that the flag was white-light blue-red. Historical photographs and preserved flags show that, as a rule, the usual blue color was used. Here is an interesting video on this topic, but it is in Russian: ruclips.net/video/6Ou0fXH78g0/видео.html&ab_channel=Pesetz
Hmm this is an interesting one and I'll have to look into it more. Perhaps it's the case that the law for a brief time technically stipulated it should be light blue, but the population hadn't caught up and was flying whatever flags they had or were used to.
Well actually it's complicated. Because some flags at that time *did* use the lighter shades of blue and red, such as the one that was flown at the Kremlin for example.
Interestingly the "Old flag" is being used by some anti-government people in Russia along side the White-Azure-White flag more commonly seen. As they supposedly share the same shade of blue.
@@Marylandbrony it seems the darker blue shade flag is associated with yeltsin while the official flag was often a lighter blue from the flag of the RSFSR
@@Marylandbrony I really really love that shade of blue. I can't expect the white-blue-white flag to become official, but if democracy ever prevails I hope they use that blue in some way.
Damn. I wish the flag was really real. The flag was so convincing given that Austria-Hungary was a dual monarchy but holy crap I feel like my whole life is a big lie after finding this out.
@@austria-hungary4981 You cannot have national flag wihout having NATION for it... And Austro-hungarian monarchy was home for many nations, not just one. It was not nation-state.
A similar, although much less well-known battle is playing out on the "Colony of Vancouver Island" wiki page. To make a long story short, an unofficial Vancouver Island flag was designed in the late 1980's by a local, combining the traditional British blue ensign with elements from the colonial seal and its become quite popular in recent years. This flag NEVER existed during the colony's lifespan in the mid 19th century, but keeps getting added to the infobox of the wiki article.
As wikipedia editor with 16 years, i can say, this is THE MAJOR problem of WIKIPEDIA. This case is light, is only a flag, but in others topic can be a damage to science. Wikipedia transform every statement in a circular fact, and later this fact run for internet , an later you can cite like source, where you can cite in wikipedia. Is the problem of the circular know. Every theorical knowledge is circular in some moments. This is a structural error in the "objetivist" desing of wikipedia by Jimmy Wales. And wikipedia has no way to solve this problems, and the debate can be eternal and exhausting.
The idea that anyone with knowledge can bring in their knowledge is great. The fact that everyone with wrong information or bias can bring in their knowledge as well is a problem.
i actually thought thisvideo was made from a professional video creator and popular person. turns out i was wrong. you are extremely talented and underated! i suggest you to not make the entire subject about just 1 flag, i suggest just naming it "the flag you though taw austra-hungary isnt actually the flag" or " this isnt the flag you think" or smth along those lnes . good work! keep it up, and u wil be really popular! pls rmember me! Edit: nothing wrong with the title, I just suggested changing it as it didnt meet the topic! Actually I think maybe expanding this with more content instead of just Austria Hungary (to make it more plentiful) or make to a series on Wikipedia Errors! would be kinda cool!
Nah, the title is perfect imo, although "This isn't the flag you think." is a great alternative. Maybe Noj could experiment with titles and swap them every once in a while? I know RUclipsrs swap their thumbnails often, and sometimes change their title after posting the video.
Fun Fact: it took me Years to finally correct the spelling of my Grandfather's name on his Wikipedia page. I even got banned for a whole year at one point.
This reminds me of another flag Wikipedia edit war I got involved in a few years ago. The "Republic of Canada" was a thing that very briefly existed during the Upper Canada Revolt in 1837-38, during their couple weeks of independence hanging out on an Island, they had enough time to create a flag. The problem is that the *only* surviving flag was torn and only a small part of it survived, with a blue background and two five pointed stars. There are two sources for what the rest of the flag looked like, and they are completely different. Insert Wikipedia shitfight here.
Fun fact, the flag of the Confederation of the Rhine stayed on Wikipedia for longer than the Confederate States of America existed! The Confederation of the Rhine error always annoys me it was made up by someone on the internet in 2004 and now Napoleonic themed mods and games have it. And the thing is, that may not be the Confederation's flag, but it IS the flag of Ecuador's Galápagos Province as well as the nation of Sierra Leone (though Sierra Leone has a lighter shade of green and blue)! For the Galápagos, the green represents the islands' abundance of vegetation, white represents the people's purity thanks to their isolation, and the blue represents the sky and the Pacific Ocean and how the islands are blessed with so much marine life. For Sierra Leone, green represents their natural resources, white represents unity and justice, and blue represents the natural harbor of Freetown, the country's capital! This flag was adopted in 1961 when they got their independence, but Elizabeth II was still their monarch until 1971 when a republican system was introduced. So during this time, Elizabeth had her own personal flag for Sierra Leone, with the light blue being turned into waves and the light green being turned into hills with a giant yellow lion in the middle as if it's running through said hills.
Wikipedia editors are the next level of reddit mods. Seems fitting for a discussion on anything Austro-Hungarian to be pretty much doomed from the start. Here's a flag with an interesting story: Anguilla (no, it's not because of Wikipedia). Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory located just north of St. Martin. Their flag has a shield with three dolphins, and these three dolphins represent unity, strength, and endurance. To the average person, it's just another shield with some detail but what many don't know is WHY there are three dolphins. And it's because for a short period of time, Anguilla was its own independent republic in the late 1960s, and the Three Dolphins were bigger as they were in the middle of the republic's flag. Basically, the UK combined them with St. Kitts as an associated state but they didn't want to be associated with St. Kitts so they kicked their police off the island and held a referendum in July 1967 with over 99 percent of the island voted to leave St Kitts in favor of returning to being a British colony, but neither St. Kitts nor the UK recognized this and after talks went nowhere, they held another referendum in February 1969 and once again, the majority voted for independence, but this time as a republic. In response to this, the British occupied the island with 300 personnel and after successful talks, Anguilla was allowed to leave the union with St Kitts which they formally did in 1980 and has remained a British territory to this day.
The article for the French Bourbon Restoration has a kind of similar back-and-fourth where there's a on-and-off debate about whether or not to use a white flag, a while flag with fleur-de-lis, or a white flag with the coat of arms on it. This happens for similar reasons to Austria-Hungary. The Kingdom of France did not have an official flag. The pure white flag was the naval flag, and the one with the fleur-de-lis was the royal standard (only used in presence of the King). The restoration restored the use of the pre-revolution flags, leading to further confusion. That same article also has a very petty edit war going on about whether the crown on the coat of arms is red or blue.
Or how the flag of the 1st French Republic is often misrepresented with the modern flag of France. 🇫🇷 Where it's shown with the blue to the left now, it seems it was usually red on the left in the 1st Republic.
@@jeffkardosjr.3825 Similarly, Wikipedia bizarrely calls it the "French First Republic" even though conventional English usage would be "First French Republic." There have been edit wars on this also.
Stylistically this video is insane and amazing, I'm in love with the almost poetry spoken word presentation and the audio-visuals. Really makes it stand out from all the other videos on these sorts of topics!
Man these kinds of errors are so common on Wikipedia that it is concerning, not only regarding flags, but with other things like anthems, maps, mottos, population numbers and even entire articles that spread misconceptions about certain topics. And fixing these articles can be complicated, because Wikipedia editors are fucking fast to revert changes and the debates for the corrections can become so heated that it can be discouraging to try to fix anything. Another similar case to this it's the case of the “Republic of the Rio Grande” a supposed state that sought its independence from Mexico in 1840. The problem is, there was never any such republic, nor any attempt to create it. The primary sources of the time and the evidence left behind by the own leaders of the movement show that the rebellion was merely a liberal and federalist rebellion that aimed to establish a provisional government while waiting for restoration of federalism in the government. There are literally no primary sources, at least in Mexico, that describe any separatist nature within the movement or some project to establish that supposed republic and yet, the Wikipedia article has a flag (Naturally, each article displays a different flag), motto, coat of arms, and even a president. At least in the Spanish Wikipedia, there was a battle to fix the article, but sadly, it only achieved to add an annotation to the bottom of the page.
Oh boy... Oh oh boy... If it's complicated these things in English, any of these but for South American History or in Spanish is a never ending headache
@@JohnSmith-sl2qc In general terms, what I mentioned is something I have read over the course of several years, so I cannot provide you with an exact source or sources. If you want to delve deeper into the topic in an introductory way, I primarily recommend you the work of Dr. Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, who is possibly the most prominent author on the subject. In particular, I recommend you her article "La supuesta República del Río Grande". The website of the "Colegio de México" is a good starting point for research, but keep in mind that most of their works are in Spanish.
once we briefly occupied Berlin (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1757_raid_on_Berlin), we beat the Ottomans twice at the gates of Vienna, reconquered Budapest, Belgrade and Temesvar. On almost every single battle that is commemorated at the Arc de Triomph in Paris, we were fighting on the other side, from the war of the Spanish succession to Napoleon's Wars up until WWI. Wallenstein and Tilly fought for the Emperor in Vienna in the Thirty Years War. Don Juan de Austria sank the Ottoman navy at Lepanto 1571. When Hernán Cortez conquered the Aztec Empire, he did it for the Habsburg king of Spain (who was also Archduke of Austria, King of Hungary, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, etc.). When the Spanish armada fought England 1588, their king was Austrian. In 1917 we had beaten the Russians so badly, that a revolution broke out ...
The Italian front, which greatly impacted mountain warfare doctrine to this day, was actually pretty impressively handled by Austria and Italy as well as a matter of fact. Austrian and Italian alpine shock troops were pretty elite and influenced commandos and special forces
Wikipedia also gets the founding of "Random Acts of Kindness" wrong. I've tried correcting it before but they still deleted it after a time because many who work at Wikipedia live in the San Francisco Bay area and would rather attribute it to someone in the San Francisco Bay area, but the reality is that it was a community college professor from Taft College, who lived in the Bakersfield area by the name of Charles Wahl who had also worked in the Nixion administration who coined it and made it popular. He had been on numerous radio programs, as well as Oprah Winfrey and discussed how he came up with the idea as part of an assignment for his Hunam Relations students. I left a reference but I guess they didn't like it.
Something similar is currently going on with the Flag on the page for the Timurid Empire. The current one on their is a fabrication based on a coin but the guy who made it keeps edit-warring the page.
Can't believe Battlefield 1 got this right. I remember playing the game and wondering why the flag of Austria Hungary was that of the Habsburgs, and not the one I knew (the wikipedia one). Turns out BF1 knew better all along
They actually did their research when making the game instead of just going to Wikipedia and copy pasting the flag on the info box. That's why I respect DICE over Paradox Interaction any day of the year.
Bf1 had a great research team, but from what I’ve heard they mostly choose the black-yellow flag as a design choice, so it was visually distinct from the Italian flag
Just wanted to say that this was a super interesting video, and that I do have another example of a flag error if you’re interested. On the 26th of July 2021, someone added a penis to the flag of Wales. Although someone tried to revert it once, the guy just put it back, and it was left standing for nearly an entire year, and was only finally properly removed in April last year. You can see the whole thing on the file history of the flag. It really makes me wonder how many Welsh flags with dicks were manufactured over those 9 months
And the comment when he readded it, too: "The flag in its current form derives from the Tudor dynasty, most Henry VII's depiction of the dragon had a pizzle.[...]" The last edit stands: "[...]There's no pizzle.[...]"
Hi Cambrian Chronicles, I just want to say I'm a fan of your videos and have been a subscriber for quite a while now, so it's pretty surreal to see your comment here. Thanks for checking out the video! And I'll be sure to research the flag of Wales incident haha
As far as I know, male heraldic animals are usually displayed with genitals. Hiding them is a result of post-medieval prudery that many heralds would find odd.
Honestly, it is fine as long as it is marked as merchant flag. (reignites edit war) No seriously, I had my fair amount of close encounters with anachronistic and wrong reconstructions. My personsl revision of SM old flag started by accident watching local tv
Hi there, thanks for watching! I think having it there labeled as the merchant flag is at least understandable, but I'd argue whatever flag is in the infobox is by default going to be assumed to be "the official flag", so the most responsible option is to not use it.
As of this point in time it is referred to as the merchant flag on the german and the hungarian language version of the page. (Both would have more relevant source material in their language) On the hungarian page there is no flag in the infobox and the flags are in a section further down.The german page simply has a link to a section further down on the page. Both pages explain the different flags. I feel like that is the best compromise. Since the empire didn't have a national flag in the same sense as most modern nations, not displaying one and explaining why and what kind of flags were used instead seems right.
I find it ironically funny that Wikipedia’s chaotic lack of consensus on what flag to display sums up the broken political landscape of the Austro Hungarian empire that made it so it would’ve been so difficult to have a single national flag
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and while encyclopedias are typically not good sources themselves, they are an excellent tool for finding sources. Most encyclopedias will list where their information is from, and they tend to use reputable sources themselves. You aren't supposed to use Wikipedia as a source for your research but rather as a hub for finding reputable sources.
The japanese empire never had the sun with the rays as its official flag. They had that flag as their Millitary flag and the one with the sun off-center as their Naval flag. They always had a flag that had a single red circle in the middle. Although this seems fixed last time i was on the page it had the rising sun flag as its national flag.
@@universenerdd Yeah but 2015-2017~ Wikipedia was when it was really unreliable with a bunch of edit wars and such. 2023 Wikipedia is much more accurate and comparable to Encyclopedia Britannica. (Though take stuff without a source with a grain of salt).
I remember playing European War on my phone long time ago. It displayed black and yellow flag as the flag of Austria-Hungary. Also, many other strategy games use this flag (because they'll get crucified by community if they don't use historically accurate flags xD). Anyways, nice video, I hope your channel will grow, you deserve it!
For a long time, Wikipedia featured flags of multiple French overseas territories that ranged from controversial to completely fictional. Many of them even made it into official emojis - there's a great post called "The flags that emoji designers got wrong" on /r/vexillology about it. The most extreme example is the French half-island of St. Martin where Wikipedia used a made up joke flag shaped like a Martini glass. Also, there's the flag of Antarctica about which CGPGrey recently made a video.
Austria Hungary still lives-the country humans and countryball fandoms have always used the same flag in that representation. And even though it’s gone, it’s memory still lives…
Fun fact: the flag of Rhode Island as shown in the Wikipedia info box is different from the picture below it, which is different from the official government website for Rhode Island, and which is different from the one on the official Rhode Island Governor’s website. Yeah, not even the Rhode Island government knows what the “official” flag is.
Some guy a decade or so ago made fictional symbols for several districts in Azerbaijan. Only three places in Azerbaijan have one so all them are made up. We started removing them last year, but realised that the local government in one of those districts, Yevlakh, had taken that symbol and made it official without even knowing its fake. It is kinda easy to make shit up and have it become real via Wikipedia
Can't say for sure, but all over the internet there is a incorrect version of the Brazilian Empire flag, Wikipedia must have used this unnoficial edit because even in Brazil the vast majority of Imperial flags sold and showcased are wrong.
One of the huge problems of Wikipedia is, that editors think facts can be voted on, and insist even if you highlight that they are wrong. Writing the page of an organization editors kept changing the official name because it contains the word 'Movement' and editors agreed to using this word with a lowercase. I even showed the official stamp, but to this very day the article does not have the correct version ONCE.
Really good video, first of all! Also I was one of the people who was misguided by this Wikipedia error. Just seeing the effect it created (for e.g. on RUclips), you learn how powerful Wikipedia is.
Interesting how Hungarian, Croatian and Slovenian Wikipedias use the "wrong" flag and Polish, Czech and Romanian Wikipedias use the Habsburg monarchy flag alongside Kingdom of Hungary flag while Slovakia has no flags Also German Wikipedia just sends you to see more flags
I know another example: The flag of the Empire of Brazil. Some ribbons located at the bottom of the flag were erroneously represented, with a different knot and color (in this case, red). I don't know when this misrepresentation started, but it seems to be not originally related to the Wikipedia itself (an official publication of Brazil apparently discuss this issue), just that they repeated and spreaded the misconception. This error was fixed, today with the correct knot and colors (green & yellow) seen at the site, but until today you can find the wrong flag in the internet, siding with the correct one. Even I got tricked on that one. I imprinted the wrong version to use it as a table flag. Sadness 😢
It's like the Byzantine Empire being represented with the Paliologos dynasty flag, when in most of It's history they used the double headed eagle or the Chi Ro symbol
If the civil ensign wasn't an official flag, why was it covering the coffins during the funeral of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife? Shouldn't they be coverd with Habsurg's flag instead?
it was he is simply arguing it shouldn't be used there (and I'm not even 100% sure he is right) on the other hand, Franz Ferdinand was Archduke of Austria and Royal Prince of Hungary the gold-black imperial flag was... the IMPERIAL flag
There is also the 1991-1993 Russian flag. It is consistently portrayed on Wikipedia with a lighter blue than the modern Russian flag, but in reality if you look at most photos from that time the hue was the same. It's just that someone looked at old sunbleached flags and photos for reference. .
The Alash Autonomy flag on Wikipedia is a bit weird... and I mean, the one on the right. A source called "Central Asian Khanates" says that the flag of the Alash Orda State / Alash Autonomy was a red background with a yellow crescent moon and star, but Wikipedia says it is just a white background with a yellow tent in the center. Which one is real?
My god they actually started an edit war because of a flag 💀. At this point we fr just make flags up for countries that dont have a flag and everyone thinks its actually the flag. The guy who changed the austria-hungary flag is a hero
Most historical countries either never had a national flag or really only had a symbol they would fly which could be adjusted to be defined as a "national flag" today. Rome, for example, never had a national flag, but representing their civil standard of SPQR as a flag is a fine way of approximating one for a modern audience. Personally, I think the civil ensign of Austria-Hungary is the best approximation of it as an entity; Austria-Hungary was never a country in the first place, but two under a complex union. It is like using the Cross of Burgundy to represent Habsburg Spain (which Wikipedia does); that flag was obviously not the flag of every individual kingdom and duchy under the Spanish Habsburgs, but it is a good umbrella representation for them, as the Cross of Burgundy was a symbol of the Habsburgs. I support the civil ensign. I think this debate is arbitrary.
@@FreddieHg37 I made two examples for a reason. The point is that Austria-Hungary wasn't a country, neither was Habsburg Spain to reiterate that example. The SPQR phrase could be equivicated to a civil standard (thereby, ensign), and people accept the use of that symbol as Rome's "flag." Both are potential answers to this question, because this question has no definitive answer. I should've mentioned that Austria's imperial flag I also consider an acceptable flag to use in this case as well. Neither the civil ensign or solely Austria's flag are completely correct in displaying the entity that was Austria-Hungary, but there's plenty enough precedent of other countries using civil ensigns or other popular symbols when there is no official one for their flag, so saying the civil ensign is 100% wrong isn't correct itself.
Now that makes me want to check what they use for the HRE Ahh, the english page has the imperial banner and a link to the flags of the HRE, while the german page doesn't even have any infobox, which clearly shows the difference in perception of how much of a nation it actually was.
Not going to lie, was shocked when I found out the Austro-Hungarian flag wasn't really the Austro-Hungarian flag. My head hurts now after believing this to be the Austro-Hungarian flag for god who knows how long.
Right, that picture definitely gave me pause about whether the red was wrong or not. If the official documents are to be followed, that means the Wikipedia error may have become so prevalent even organizations like the UN are accidentally purchasing the incorrect flag.
In the Spanish version of Wikipedia, the process to remove the civil ensign was far more peaceful and the main hero who made it possible was Virum Mundi.
Funnily enough Battlefield 1 managed to not use the civil ensign flag for the Austro-Hungarian faction, only problem is that they put the coat of arms on the black and yellow flag
It's a shame the Austro-Hungarian government cannot take a stance on this issue.
hear! hear!
Imagine if the Habsburg heir today decides to get involved in the matter
governmentS
@@casteddu6740 I'm pretty sure they got inbred so much they basically don't have one
We wouldn't care
The Austro-Hungarian wiki page seems to be as united as the empire itself
@Adolphus Hitler (ANTI-FURRY FUHRER) fr that got me shitting my pants like emperor Francis in the Napoleonic war videos by oversimplified
@@eaturcookiescookie7462atleast your not the australian prime minister 😂😂
Astro-Hungry best country in the world
@@addygreen8919 australasian-angry way better
@@addygreen8919 All other countries are run by hungry girls.
Ahh yes, the War for the Austro-Hungarian flag, the most terrifying conflict of the 21st century, fought on the battlefields of Wikipedia
Do not forget the Star Trek Into Darkness "I" capitalization war
Probably the worst conflict involving Austria-Hungary in the whole of history, riiiight?
More like the *Austria-Hungary disorder/effect*
This is a whole new term about the manipulation of the majority of people by using a convincing yet fake flag of a country on a real nation. The Austria-Hungary effect is new and dangerous and is currently taking its toll on all of our lives.
Even Austria and Hungary banned the page
I mean… there’s also ukraine but I don’t wanna do that to u
The problem with Wikipedia isn't that it's necessarily unreliable, it's that when there is any false information, it spreads around as fact pretty quickly
Actually the first can apply to political articles of Wikipedia since it just parrots what most mainstream news says, not even questioning their latest... well let's just say fabrications and deception
The price of an agoristic setting is that quality is double tied to esch editor engagement, even before competence
That says it, basically. Overconfident delusional people (or malicious.. I'm not a mind-reader) thinking they're in the right when they're not really, people agreeing with them because they're used to the thing they made (wrongly), thing stays up, people agree thing is fact.. thing is not fact.
Yeah. That is the Wikipedia effect. But this one is a special case for many psychologists. This one is the Austria-Hungary effect, and it involves basically convincing people that the fake flag is the real flag. They did this for years!
@@austria-hungary4981 what is the flag on your pfp?
Man, learning about Wikipedia editing wars is honestly hilarious. Those editors take their roles really seriously, it’s also fun to learn about story’s like this. Really good video
This is why you should always check the edit history
Someone that can’t accept they’re wrong and doubles down?Too familiar
Believe me, as a Wikipedia editor, the political editors ESPECIALLY have no lives and it's pretty much a group of factions warring each other over what can be the true "consensus"
I hope some day politics would be at least like that.
as silly as it may sound it’s probably a good thing they take stuff seriously, considering their decisions can affect public consciousness like we saw in the video
As a Hungarian, I can confirm that this is as insane as our time with the austrian empire.
Your country was massive under the empire though
Unreasonably powerful and undermining everyone else is pretty insane.
@@Ethan11892 It has massive before the empire
Only downhill from there.
@@Ethan11892 those territories were hungarians since ages before the Habsburgs. The submission started with we got rekt by the ottomans, and when the HRE liberated Hungary, they forget to leave.
This happened to literally every Vietnamese dynasty, where they got fictional flags that got plastered on every page
If I recall correctly, one of those fictional flags is literally flying over the tomb of the first emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty
Do you have informations?
source?
@@stars-hk9uo Wikipedia
I'm only okay if it's used to represent them in countryballs or things like that, but I think a wikipedia page could cause confusions.
@@Igor_054 you sir win the internet for today
Wow. Millions of people have always known that as the Austro-Hungarian flag, all video games use that flag, virtually any content you can find about Austria Hungary on the internet uses that flag, I have never heard about this before. It's incredible how much a wikipedia page can deceive so many people, thank you for making this video, looking forward to the next.
Maybe because it predates wikipedia?
Battlefield 1 actually uses the black and yellow flag for Austria-Hungary
Victoria 2 uses black and yellow as well.
I always thought black/yellow flag was common knowledge. I am actually surprised to learn that the "vertical sandwich flag" was used irl at all since I always believed it to be fan made.
@@andrewbattleship2420 AFAIK Victoria uses black and yellow for the Habsburg Empire, not for the Dual Monarchy. Paradox games might have been part of the misinformation here. Since PDX games like to have new flags for countries that undergo important political changes, using black-yellow for the Habsburg Empire, and then, when the 1868 Compromise happens, renaming the state and changing the flag to the double-tricolor merchant flag is a good way to give visual feedback to the player. But together with Wikipedia it will give players the false impression that this is what the actual flag was.
My grandpa had this 1970 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. When I was young I was interested in flags (still am), so that I would check its flag pages often. It also had this civil ensign for Austria-Hungary flag. I grew up thinking like that. The perception may be way older than Wikipedia.
I agree this error must have preceded Wikipedia, although I think Wikipedia helped popularize it further across the internet and in the popular conscious.
As I've written in other comments, one theory I have is that because this flag was flown on ships traveling to other countries, it may have become commonly associated with Austria-Hungary abroad, despite not being widely used or seen in actual Austria-Hungary. This is why while I found posters, postcards, etc with the civil ensign on it, they tend to have all been printed in the United States, whereas documents actually printed in Austria-Hungary do not use the ensign. Perhaps this extended to Encyclopedia Britannica as well.
Merchant ensign were way more representative than "standard" (no pun intended) government flags.
Russia had same with st andrew cross
@@FlagAnthem the purpose of the flag design is more likely based in sea usage. The only non quadrilateral flag is Nepal, a landlocked mountain country.
@@yorgunsamuray indeed
@@nojrantsEste problema de la bandera del Imperio Austrohúngaro es muy parecido al caso de la bandera del Imperio Inca.
5:42
"You expose yourself as a Wikipedia-brain as you repeat the FALLACY..."
unfathomably based energy
*F A L G*
"He who controls Wikipedia, controls the world"
"Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past." - George Orwell
Why hasn't Jimbo Wales been crowned the Emperor of the World then?
?
@@Vent0zin it’s a reference to a quote by George Orwell.
@@FilipFCBit's too bad that guy was super racist and stuff
I’ve actually been to the Vatican and bought a small flag, which even they got wrong! Great video also keep up the work.
As an Italian (my great grandfather fought the austro Hungarians in WW1) i was always very interested about our greatest enemy. I was confused about this issue too, my great grandpa for example, had many pictures of the Battle of the Piave River, in one photo you can see a captured black and yellow flag, (although it's hard to notice since the photos are black and white)
You haven’t thought your flag might be a variant of the official design? Generally, churches fly rectangular Vatican flags, which are supposed to be square officially, mainly because they’re easier to get.
i guess it's their defacto flag now
@@ernestov1777 Greatest enemy? We were allied untill Italy betrayed us
@@MajorTom420 We were not allied. We had a defensive alliance, your country attacked Serbia, and you held our territories.
This reminds me of how the battle flag of the Confederate States of America has become the most prominent flag of that nation in popular culture, despite it never being the official flag.
I think it's because at one point most people's exposure to confederate symbols was through watching Battle of Gettysburg re-enactments, in which the confederate side fights under the flag of the unit that was in that battle. So people started mistakenly thinking that that was the main flag of the CSA, and from then on it caught on as the symbol of the south
Or just how a torture instrument has become a symbol of salvation and even healthcare
The further interesting point is that that flag was already cemented in confederate popular opinion as the best symbol of their “nation”. It likely would have become the national flag eventually.
great example of a very similar story, and fun fact: the confederate flag was inspired by the Austrian red-white-red flag; full circle 🤣
@@FlagAnthem what are you talking about?
I like the fact that in Battlefield 1 the team actually did their research and used the Habsburg monarchy flag for that faction.
Wikipedia can be a nightmare to deal with because there are a lot of highly opinionated editors who are friends off-site with moderators and admins.
Very true. I myself was once very opinionated.
There should be a fact check team and external experts. Can't argue with hard data
@@FlagAnthem I'm very much on board with this. Its a very toxic place where "article stability" outweighs any actual evidence one can provide.
What?
@@FlagAnthem Hey, if those external experts want to edit things, they can. There is literally nothing stopping them from becoming an editor. Wikipedia wouldn't pay them to become an editor because directly editing an article you've been paid to edit is against community rules, but they can edit anything.
As for fact checks? There's a bunch of internal systems for fact checks and every contentious claim is supposed to be cited to a source. There's a giant backlog on improperly sourced claims and articles, but you can verify anything that does have a citation. Higher-quality articles (good and featured articles) go through a peer review process to receive that status, which doubly acts as fact-checking.
Thank you so much for this video. For years the mystery of the Austro Hungarian flag has absolutely consumed me. I have wasted countless hours of my life searching for photographs of a real Austro Hungarian navel ensign flag dated between 1867 and 1918 to no avail. I've always known that the Austro Hungarian empire did not have an official state flag but the mystery of why we use the navel ensign in popular culture has always confused me. This video has given me context to how the navel ensign came into public conciousness yet I still cannot find an actual image of a real flag used during the 19th and 20th centuries.
@Kaiser Franz Joseph True. Plus the only evidience of this flag existing before 1918 that I could find were pictures of the flag on stamps and match boxes. Wikipedia didn't create the flag but the million dollar question is if there is any proof of a physical navel ensign flag being used in the old AHE.
A good place to start might be Austro-Hungarian shipping companies, like Österreichischer Lloyd. Looking that company up you can sort of make out the civil ensign being flown in some of the black-and-white photos of their ships:
earlofcruise.blogspot.com/2017/07/history-one-of-earliest-steam-ship.html
It seems to me like the civil ensign was probably pretty rare in Austria-Hungary, as most primary sources actually produced in the country use the other flags mentioned in the video or even the war ensign over the civil ensign, but it's possible that from seeing the civil ensign regularly in their ports (and because it intuitively makes sense as a national flag), foreign publishers picked up the civil ensign and helped popularize it. This might explain why although there's a bunch of postcards, books, trinkets, etc with the civil ensign, most of them are printed in other countries (e.g. the picture at 3:32 in the video was printed in New York). In the debate on Wikipedia, a lot of people were citing the existence of those printed materials as proof the civil ensign was a sort of de facto flag, ignoring where the materials came from.
@@nojrants Thank you so much for this source its nice to actually see photographic use of the flag within the empire. I can finally put a long lost mystery of mine to rest. Now maybe the mystery will pivet too if there are any suriving authentic flags still around today. I know there is one picture of a tiny Austro Hungarian flag on Google images but I don't think there is a verifiable date to its creation. Also just want to say that both of your videos are great, really enjoyed them both.
@Kaiser Franz Joseph omg the real Franz Josef I
@Kaiser Franz Joseph my history textbook from the 1990s also used it
I've been lied to about Austria-Hungary, I even bought the civil flag. But, I now know the truth. Thank you
...so?
It may not have been THE but is still A flag of AH.
@@FlagAnthem True, it's still a flag that was used to represent the Austro-Hungarian Empire
@@dylanlovesqueentoomuch8720 Just gotta say I like your profile picture! Good music taste!
@@dylanlovesqueentoomuch8720 AH propaganda did use it as well.
We have de facto but not de iure national anthems (Sweden, or Italy until 2019), why not de facto national flags?
Of course an encyclopedia should know better
@@FlagAnthem Fair Point
"You expose yourself as a Wikipedia-brain!"
This has to be the most vague insult I have seen.
that “falg” caught me off guard 💀
The Vatican flag also had the incorrect hue of yellow in the coat of arms. Someone assumed it was the same hue as the yellow on the left banner. This has since been fixed.
Quandale Dingle
I was 100% aware of austria hungary not having an actual common flag/used mostly the black and red, yet I never actually internalised that the most common flag portrayal is actually wrong for some reason. I just went with the flow
This is exaggerated. There is a reason propaganda and even charts report it.
@@FlagAnthem It's not exaggerated. The civil ensign was always just that, not officially associated with the country. The Austrian empire predates the idea of nationalism, and even after the nationalistic ideas of the 18th centuries spread across Europe, The Austrian Empire was simply too diverse. By the time the Austria-Hungary compromise came around, it was either that or the Habsburgs lost the majority of their empire or they ran this stupid idea of a dual monarchy system, but not a single soul in the empire ever considered themselves "Austria-Hungarian" thus it really never needed an official flag that represented more than one part of the nation at a time. The civil ensign was only ever created in order to represent stuff like their navy, since both Austria and Hungary shared the same military, etc. But the country was too short live to ever build a national identity, and like in previous centuries, they were really just considered to be the Habsburg empire.
@@Yaseenicus A merchant ensign IS by definition associated with the country.
@@FlagAnthem but you still don't conflate a national flag with it's navy or merchant flag. You wouldn't depict the UK with it's red merchant flag or it's white navy flag either
@@delfinenteddyson9865 maybe because the UK has actually one?
I think the Austro-Hungarian flag is misrepresented in strategy games too. I know Vicky 2 and Hoi4 use the error further cementing its widespread usage.
It's not really an error. The black and yellow flag was a flag used for the Habsburg monarchy but not the duel-monarchy. If you look at a map for the time, Hugary and Austria are a single state, and the Wikipedia flag was used as a civil ensign.
And the alleged Rheinbund flag is in Mount & Blade: Warband
well you cant have multiple flags for one country so its the best solution
@@gangstascout3593 Why can't you have represent the same country with two flags?
@@counterfeit1148 because thats not how those games work
Man this video is refreshing, I remember getting into vexillology and heraldry around 2015 and slowly coming to the intensely frustrating realization that a lot of flags and arms that people were making fun of were just bad Wikipedia renderings rather than intrinsically bad designs.
Does this go for the US-State flags as well?
@@fr4rq236 no
I miss the old Qing render
@TheFlagandAnthemGuy the old Qing render was iconic. Truly a tragedy that it was completely wrong
@@fr4rq236 unfortunately no
This is...absolutely insane. You've made a dispute about a flag look like some kind of intense, action-packed movie
*reverts your edit*
cringe r*publican (ewwwwww)
It was to fun to watch tho 😂
at first I though the background synth was annoying and out of place, but it fit quite well in the end.
I had an assignment in middle school where we got a WWI country and acted like that country in a mock war. Part of the assignment was to create a flag. My group got Austria-Hungary. We began to make the civil ensign because we saw all the search results saying that flag was the offical flag. When our teacher noticed it, she said "thats not the flag of Austria-Hungary". We had to change it to the black-yellow flag for the assignment. So yeah, Wikipedia almost made my group get a bad grade.
Another fun fact, the group that got Germany also made a similar mistake, except they made the WWII German flag. Yeah...
The flag of the Empire of Brazil was also the victim of an edit war. Ironically, neither the old version that was removed, nor the one currently being displayed on the page are historically accurate.
As with the other cases, if you Google "Flag of the Empire of Brazil" most results will show the old, wrong, Wikipedia flag
qual o erro da atual? usa-se o forro vermelho, representando a bandeira nacional
Which is the right one then?
Qual é a correta mesmo? sempre fiquei confuso sobre isso, além do fato da bandeira imperial ter realmente mudado com o tempo pela criação de mais províncias
Whats the correct flag of Brazilian empire then?
Sério?
I want to add that because of Wikipedia, the understanding of the flag of Russia 1991-1993 has changed. According to the law, it was in the ratio of 1:2 and was white-blue-red, however, due to the fact that the word "lazurny" (the poetic name of blue) was used, Wikipedia, and its users began to think that the flag was white-light blue-red. Historical photographs and preserved flags show that, as a rule, the usual blue color was used.
Here is an interesting video on this topic, but it is in Russian:
ruclips.net/video/6Ou0fXH78g0/видео.html&ab_channel=Pesetz
Hmm this is an interesting one and I'll have to look into it more. Perhaps it's the case that the law for a brief time technically stipulated it should be light blue, but the population hadn't caught up and was flying whatever flags they had or were used to.
Well actually it's complicated. Because some flags at that time *did* use the lighter shades of blue and red, such as the one that was flown at the Kremlin for example.
Interestingly the "Old flag" is being used by some anti-government people in Russia along side the White-Azure-White flag more commonly seen. As they supposedly share the same shade of blue.
@@Marylandbrony it seems the darker blue shade flag is associated with yeltsin while the official flag was often a lighter blue from the flag of the RSFSR
@@Marylandbrony I really really love that shade of blue. I can't expect the white-blue-white flag to become official, but if democracy ever prevails I hope they use that blue in some way.
Damn. I wish the flag was really real. The flag was so convincing given that Austria-Hungary was a dual monarchy but holy crap I feel like my whole life is a big lie after finding this out.
It was
@@FlagAnthem I meant as the national flag. The civil ensign was real but it was never adopted as the national flag so.
@@austria-hungary4981 "national" is a functionality before being a status
@@austria-hungary4981 You cannot have national flag wihout having NATION for it... And Austro-hungarian monarchy was home for many nations, not just one. It was not nation-state.
@@kolomaznik333 what about belgium?
A similar, although much less well-known battle is playing out on the "Colony of Vancouver Island" wiki page. To make a long story short, an unofficial Vancouver Island flag was designed in the late 1980's by a local, combining the traditional British blue ensign with elements from the colonial seal and its become quite popular in recent years. This flag NEVER existed during the colony's lifespan in the mid 19th century, but keeps getting added to the infobox of the wiki article.
As wikipedia editor with 16 years, i can say, this is THE MAJOR problem of WIKIPEDIA. This case is light, is only a flag, but in others topic can be a damage to science. Wikipedia transform every statement in a circular fact, and later this fact run for internet , an later you can cite like source, where you can cite in wikipedia. Is the problem of the circular know. Every theorical knowledge is circular in some moments. This is a structural error in the "objetivist" desing of wikipedia by Jimmy Wales. And wikipedia has no way to solve this problems, and the debate can be eternal and exhausting.
The idea that anyone with knowledge can bring in their knowledge is great.
The fact that everyone with wrong information or bias can bring in their knowledge as well is a problem.
I saw so many wikipedia pages with contradictions within the same article is insane
i actually thought thisvideo was made from a professional video creator and popular person. turns out i was wrong. you are extremely talented and underated! i suggest you to not make the entire subject about just 1 flag, i suggest just naming it "the flag you though taw austra-hungary isnt actually the flag" or " this isnt the flag you think" or smth along those lnes . good work! keep it up, and u wil be really popular! pls rmember me!
Edit: nothing wrong with the title, I just suggested changing it as it didnt meet the topic! Actually I think maybe expanding this with more content instead of just Austria Hungary (to make it more plentiful) or make to a series on Wikipedia Errors! would be kinda cool!
Thank you, I appreciate the support and feedback! Don't worry I'll always remember my very first comment
@@nojrants do you have an editor because rs high quality editing and stuff
@@BelarusianMapping No, all edited by myself
@@nojrants wow. I applaud you! Not to pressure you, but continue amazing work!,
Nah, the title is perfect imo, although "This isn't the flag you think." is a great alternative. Maybe Noj could experiment with titles and swap them every once in a while? I know RUclipsrs swap their thumbnails often, and sometimes change their title after posting the video.
Fun Fact: it took me Years to finally correct the spelling of my Grandfather's name on his Wikipedia page. I even got banned for a whole year at one point.
Who is your grandpa?
@@lucasbrant9856 Joseph Hitler
Aight this is interesting, who is your grandpa?
I as well would like to know who your Grandfather was?
I want to know too now
This reminds me of another flag Wikipedia edit war I got involved in a few years ago. The "Republic of Canada" was a thing that very briefly existed during the Upper Canada Revolt in 1837-38, during their couple weeks of independence hanging out on an Island, they had enough time to create a flag. The problem is that the *only* surviving flag was torn and only a small part of it survived, with a blue background and two five pointed stars. There are two sources for what the rest of the flag looked like, and they are completely different. Insert Wikipedia shitfight here.
Fun fact, the flag of the Confederation of the Rhine stayed on Wikipedia for longer than the Confederate States of America existed! The Confederation of the Rhine error always annoys me it was made up by someone on the internet in 2004 and now Napoleonic themed mods and games have it. And the thing is, that may not be the Confederation's flag, but it IS the flag of Ecuador's Galápagos Province as well as the nation of Sierra Leone (though Sierra Leone has a lighter shade of green and blue)! For the Galápagos, the green represents the islands' abundance of vegetation, white represents the people's purity thanks to their isolation, and the blue represents the sky and the Pacific Ocean and how the islands are blessed with so much marine life.
For Sierra Leone, green represents their natural resources, white represents unity and justice, and blue represents the natural harbor of Freetown, the country's capital! This flag was adopted in 1961 when they got their independence, but Elizabeth II was still their monarch until 1971 when a republican system was introduced. So during this time, Elizabeth had her own personal flag for Sierra Leone, with the light blue being turned into waves and the light green being turned into hills with a giant yellow lion in the middle as if it's running through said hills.
upside down molossia
Why are you still everywhere
Dude you are legit everywhere lol
@@Kar98_Karl me too
I aint reading allat
Wikipedia editors are the next level of reddit mods. Seems fitting for a discussion on anything Austro-Hungarian to be pretty much doomed from the start. Here's a flag with an interesting story: Anguilla (no, it's not because of Wikipedia). Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory located just north of St. Martin. Their flag has a shield with three dolphins, and these three dolphins represent unity, strength, and endurance. To the average person, it's just another shield with some detail but what many don't know is WHY there are three dolphins. And it's because for a short period of time, Anguilla was its own independent republic in the late 1960s, and the Three Dolphins were bigger as they were in the middle of the republic's flag.
Basically, the UK combined them with St. Kitts as an associated state but they didn't want to be associated with St. Kitts so they kicked their police off the island and held a referendum in July 1967 with over 99 percent of the island voted to leave St Kitts in favor of returning to being a British colony, but neither St. Kitts nor the UK recognized this and after talks went nowhere, they held another referendum in February 1969 and once again, the majority voted for independence, but this time as a republic. In response to this, the British occupied the island with 300 personnel and after successful talks, Anguilla was allowed to leave the union with St Kitts which they formally did in 1980 and has remained a British territory to this day.
Amazing video. I realize I have been betrayed by Wikipedia all these years.
First time?
Nah it is fine. Other things are more serious
This kind of issue troubles me, as a Wikipedia editor.
I have been betrayed by the very history books, strategy games, and interactive educational programs I've trusted
The article for the French Bourbon Restoration has a kind of similar back-and-fourth where there's a on-and-off debate about whether or not to use a white flag, a while flag with fleur-de-lis, or a white flag with the coat of arms on it.
This happens for similar reasons to Austria-Hungary. The Kingdom of France did not have an official flag. The pure white flag was the naval flag, and the one with the fleur-de-lis was the royal standard (only used in presence of the King). The restoration restored the use of the pre-revolution flags, leading to further confusion.
That same article also has a very petty edit war going on about whether the crown on the coat of arms is red or blue.
Or how the flag of the 1st French Republic is often misrepresented with the modern flag of France.
🇫🇷 Where it's shown with the blue to the left now, it seems it was usually red on the left in the 1st Republic.
@@jeffkardosjr.3825only in 1793. 15 february 1794 🇫🇷
@@jeffkardosjr.3825 Similarly, Wikipedia bizarrely calls it the "French First Republic" even though conventional English usage would be "First French Republic." There have been edit wars on this also.
Can’t believe Wikipedia used the civil enzyme of Austria-Hungary
“Go to the Wikipedia page of any obscure country”
*types “France” 😂
"frqance"
I had genuinely no idea that wasn’t actually Austria Hungary’s flag, that’s the flag everyone (including me) used for it when I was in high school
Stylistically this video is insane and amazing, I'm in love with the almost poetry spoken word presentation and the audio-visuals. Really makes it stand out from all the other videos on these sorts of topics!
I'm Hungarian, and even I was brainwashed by the wikipedia civil ensign. Thank you for this video.
That's hilarious. They should've get the Wikipedia supreme court to make the judgment.
6:13 My favourite part. Someone added the naval ensign, and the Hungarian flag without Austria's. What the hell happened there?
this video is now on the flags of austria hungary article on english wikipedia as a citation for the civil ensign
Wow, that's a surreal thing to see. Thank you for alerting me of this!
Man these kinds of errors are so common on Wikipedia that it is concerning, not only regarding flags, but with other things like anthems, maps, mottos, population numbers and even entire articles that spread misconceptions about certain topics. And fixing these articles can be complicated, because Wikipedia editors are fucking fast to revert changes and the debates for the corrections can become so heated that it can be discouraging to try to fix anything.
Another similar case to this it's the case of the “Republic of the Rio Grande” a supposed state that sought its independence from Mexico in 1840. The problem is, there was never any such republic, nor any attempt to create it. The primary sources of the time and the evidence left behind by the own leaders of the movement show that the rebellion was merely a liberal and federalist rebellion that aimed to establish a provisional government while waiting for restoration of federalism in the government. There are literally no primary sources, at least in Mexico, that describe any separatist nature within the movement or some project to establish that supposed republic and yet, the Wikipedia article has a flag (Naturally, each article displays a different flag), motto, coat of arms, and even a president. At least in the Spanish Wikipedia, there was a battle to fix the article, but sadly, it only achieved to add an annotation to the bottom of the page.
Oh boy... Oh oh boy... If it's complicated these things in English, any of these but for South American History or in Spanish is a never ending headache
Yeah because they are obsessed with the status quo. It's almost impossible to unscrew any errors
Where are your sources. I'm not trying to be annoying I'm genuinely curious
@@JohnSmith-sl2qc In general terms, what I mentioned is something I have read over the course of several years, so I cannot provide you with an exact source or sources.
If you want to delve deeper into the topic in an introductory way, I primarily recommend you the work of Dr. Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, who is possibly the most prominent author on the subject. In particular, I recommend you her article "La supuesta República del Río Grande". The website of the "Colegio de México" is a good starting point for research, but keep in mind that most of their works are in Spanish.
The War over Austria-Hungary's Flag was more impressive than the entire military history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
once we briefly occupied Berlin (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1757_raid_on_Berlin), we beat the Ottomans twice at the gates of Vienna, reconquered Budapest, Belgrade and Temesvar. On almost every single battle that is commemorated at the Arc de Triomph in Paris, we were fighting on the other side, from the war of the Spanish succession to Napoleon's Wars up until WWI.
Wallenstein and Tilly fought for the Emperor in Vienna in the Thirty Years War.
Don Juan de Austria sank the Ottoman navy at Lepanto 1571.
When Hernán Cortez conquered the Aztec Empire, he did it for the Habsburg king of Spain (who was also Archduke of Austria, King of Hungary, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, etc.).
When the Spanish armada fought England 1588, their king was Austrian.
In 1917 we had beaten the Russians so badly, that a revolution broke out ...
The Italian front, which greatly impacted mountain warfare doctrine to this day, was actually pretty impressively handled by Austria and Italy as well as a matter of fact. Austrian and Italian alpine shock troops were pretty elite and influenced commandos and special forces
Wikipedia also gets the founding of "Random Acts of Kindness" wrong. I've tried correcting it before but they still deleted it after a time because many who work at Wikipedia live in the San Francisco Bay area and would rather attribute it to someone in the San Francisco Bay area, but the reality is that it was a community college professor from Taft College, who lived in the Bakersfield area by the name of Charles Wahl who had also worked in the Nixion administration who coined it and made it popular. He had been on numerous radio programs, as well as Oprah Winfrey and discussed how he came up with the idea as part of an assignment for his Hunam Relations students. I left a reference but I guess they didn't like it.
wdym work on wikipedia? wikipedia doesnt pay any of its editors
@@clayel1 you don't have to get paid for it to be work.
@@markadams7046 its volunteering from all across the world, not just california lol
when did you make the edit?
@@clayel1 Its been known that a majority of those who review the edits are journalist from the SF Bay area.
Something similar is currently going on with the Flag on the page for the Timurid Empire. The current one on their is a fabrication based on a coin but the guy who made it keeps edit-warring the page.
@Axelandruromanus I have no idea the source for that one, it's not cited, I'm pretty sure it's another fabrication
Can't believe Battlefield 1 got this right. I remember playing the game and wondering why the flag of Austria Hungary was that of the Habsburgs, and not the one I knew (the wikipedia one). Turns out BF1 knew better all along
They actually did their research when making the game instead of just going to Wikipedia and copy pasting the flag on the info box. That's why I respect DICE over Paradox Interaction any day of the year.
Considering it is a war scenario mainly on land it was fair play
Bf1 had a great research team, but from what I’ve heard they mostly choose the black-yellow flag as a design choice, so it was visually distinct from the Italian flag
Just wanted to say that this was a super interesting video, and that I do have another example of a flag error if you’re interested.
On the 26th of July 2021, someone added a penis to the flag of Wales.
Although someone tried to revert it once, the guy just put it back, and it was left standing for nearly an entire year, and was only finally properly removed in April last year. You can see the whole thing on the file history of the flag. It really makes me wonder how many Welsh flags with dicks were manufactured over those 9 months
And the comment when he readded it, too: "The flag in its current form derives from the Tudor dynasty, most Henry VII's depiction of the dragon had a pizzle.[...]"
The last edit stands: "[...]There's no pizzle.[...]"
Hi Cambrian Chronicles, I just want to say I'm a fan of your videos and have been a subscriber for quite a while now, so it's pretty surreal to see your comment here. Thanks for checking out the video! And I'll be sure to research the flag of Wales incident haha
@@nojrants Thank you, that’s very kind of you. I will definitely be becoming a long term subscriber of your channel!
As far as I know, male heraldic animals are usually displayed with genitals. Hiding them is a result of post-medieval prudery that many heralds would find odd.
KKSKSKSK
Honestly, it is fine as long as it is marked as merchant flag. (reignites edit war)
No seriously, I had my fair amount of close encounters with anachronistic and wrong reconstructions.
My personsl revision of SM old flag started by accident watching local tv
Hi there, thanks for watching! I think having it there labeled as the merchant flag is at least understandable, but I'd argue whatever flag is in the infobox is by default going to be assumed to be "the official flag", so the most responsible option is to not use it.
@@nojrants I see your point.
As of this point in time it is referred to as the merchant flag on the german and the hungarian language version of the page. (Both would have more relevant source material in their language)
On the hungarian page there is no flag in the infobox and the flags are in a section further down.The german page simply has a link to a section further down on the page. Both pages explain the different flags.
I feel like that is the best compromise. Since the empire didn't have a national flag in the same sense as most modern nations, not displaying one and explaining why and what kind of flags were used instead seems right.
I find it ironically funny that Wikipedia’s chaotic lack of consensus on what flag to display sums up the broken political landscape of the Austro Hungarian empire that made it so it would’ve been so difficult to have a single national flag
This is great example of why Wikipedia is not a reliable source for anything, and should never be used as a substitute for doing your own research.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and while encyclopedias are typically not good sources themselves, they are an excellent tool for finding sources. Most encyclopedias will list where their information is from, and they tend to use reputable sources themselves.
You aren't supposed to use Wikipedia as a source for your research but rather as a hub for finding reputable sources.
One of the funniest thing about that Vatican flag is that Encyclopedia Britannica also use the incorrect flag from Wikipedia.
amazing video, never knew this about austria hungary NOT having an offical flag
The japanese empire never had the sun with the rays as its official flag. They had that flag as their Millitary flag and the one with the sun off-center as their Naval flag. They always had a flag that had a single red circle in the middle. Although this seems fixed last time i was on the page it had the rising sun flag as its national flag.
Interesting! As a Wikipedia editor and mostly lurker these days, I really find this Wikipedia-y of my fellow editors.
Sup bro
Is your profile picture the flag of Mercia?
the "LOL" yell at 6:43 😂😂
Wikipedia try not to be incorrect challenge (impossible)
You again
Ur channel is dead 😂😂😂
Mfw people say Wikipedia is the most unreliable source (They don’t realize 2017 era Wikipedia is long over)
@@robertoroberto9798 2017 wikipedia wasn't really bad
@@universenerdd Yeah but 2015-2017~ Wikipedia was when it was really unreliable with a bunch of edit wars and such. 2023 Wikipedia is much more accurate and comparable to Encyclopedia Britannica. (Though take stuff without a source with a grain of salt).
this deserves to go viral 😭
The chaos of the editors is just like the chaos of the austria hungary
I remember playing European War on my phone long time ago. It displayed black and yellow flag as the flag of Austria-Hungary. Also, many other strategy games use this flag (because they'll get crucified by community if they don't use historically accurate flags xD).
Anyways, nice video, I hope your channel will grow, you deserve it!
Aye fellow player of the game
The fact this country was such a mess that Wikipedia struggled with the flags is funny
Speaking of Austria. The flag on Wikipedia of Lombardy-Venetia was for a while also wrong. It was never green yet because of that error.
Oh yes.
The irony is that even the text stated it was golden.
Also, it was the flag of the Governor, we are back again
You can make it far dude your voice quick transitioning is perfect for modern day youtube you caught my attention fully
Thank you, glad you liked the video!
For a long time, Wikipedia featured flags of multiple French overseas territories that ranged from controversial to completely fictional. Many of them even made it into official emojis - there's a great post called "The flags that emoji designers got wrong" on /r/vexillology about it. The most extreme example is the French half-island of St. Martin where Wikipedia used a made up joke flag shaped like a Martini glass. Also, there's the flag of Antarctica about which CGPGrey recently made a video.
Part 2 please, the file for the flag of Mauritania has an interesting history too
No one cares about that country tho 5:55 5:56 5:57 5:57 5:57 5:57 5:57 5:57 5:58 5:58 5:58 5:58 5:59 5:59 5:59 5:59 6:00 6:00 6:01 6:01 6:01 6:01 6:01 6:02 6:02 6:02 6:02 6:02 6:02 6:03 6:03 6:03 6:03 6:03 6:04 6:04 6:04 6:05 6:05 6:05 6:05 6:06 6:06 6:06 6:06 6:06 6:07
Austria Hungary still lives-the country humans and countryball fandoms have always used the same flag in that representation. And even though it’s gone, it’s memory still lives…
This is the best non-issue I've seen people fight over for awhile
Honestly, historical accuracy IS a issue
problem is that having adults behaving as teens doesn't help running an encyclopedia
The italian kingdom´s flag is also incorrect if im not mistaken. They dont have the crown in top of the flag in wikipedia
It is ok. Crownless version was civil.
@@FlagAnthem that was the whole issue with austria hungary but okay
@@FlagAnthem no…
I'm Austrian and didn't know that this flag wasn't the real one.
Fun fact: the flag of Rhode Island as shown in the Wikipedia info box is different from the picture below it, which is different from the official government website for Rhode Island, and which is different from the one on the official Rhode Island Governor’s website. Yeah, not even the Rhode Island government knows what the “official” flag is.
The fact of it being a flag used at sea is ironic when remembering that Austria currently has no navy
Neither does Hungary
When you brought up the confederation of the Rhine, I literally went, "oh God, no!"
Some guy a decade or so ago made fictional symbols for several districts in Azerbaijan. Only three places in Azerbaijan have one so all them are made up. We started removing them last year, but realised that the local government in one of those districts, Yevlakh, had taken that symbol and made it official without even knowing its fake. It is kinda easy to make shit up and have it become real via Wikipedia
Can't say for sure, but all over the internet there is a incorrect version of the Brazilian Empire flag, Wikipedia must have used this unnoficial edit because even in Brazil the vast majority of Imperial flags sold and showcased are wrong.
What is the correct?
One of the huge problems of Wikipedia is, that editors think facts can be voted on, and insist even if you highlight that they are wrong. Writing the page of an organization editors kept changing the official name because it contains the word 'Movement' and editors agreed to using this word with a lowercase. I even showed the official stamp, but to this very day the article does not have the correct version ONCE.
Literally until I saw this video, I had no idea that that flag wasn't the official state flag
Really good video, first of all! Also I was one of the people who was misguided by this Wikipedia error. Just seeing the effect it created (for e.g. on RUclips), you learn how powerful Wikipedia is.
Thank you! I agree, the ensign error really became ubiquitous after the Wikipedia page went up, but it seems like it's starting to change now
Interesting how Hungarian, Croatian and Slovenian Wikipedias use the "wrong" flag and Polish, Czech and Romanian Wikipedias use the Habsburg monarchy flag alongside Kingdom of Hungary flag while Slovakia has no flags
Also German Wikipedia just sends you to see more flags
wikipedia needs more coordination
this is god-tier thanks, and as an avid supporter of the Habsburg's Flag I thank you for helping our cause!
I know another example: The flag of the Empire of Brazil.
Some ribbons located at the bottom of the flag were erroneously represented, with a different knot and color (in this case, red). I don't know when this misrepresentation started, but it seems to be not originally related to the Wikipedia itself (an official publication of Brazil apparently discuss this issue), just that they repeated and spreaded the misconception.
This error was fixed, today with the correct knot and colors (green & yellow) seen at the site, but until today you can find the wrong flag in the internet, siding with the correct one.
Even I got tricked on that one. I imprinted the wrong version to use it as a table flag. Sadness 😢
RUclips delivers gems sometimes. Don't change man, just continue
It's really amusing how this flag chaos essentially portrays how chaotic Austria-Hungary was as well
Though Wikipedia uses correct flag, many people blindly believe the Japanese war flag as the national flag of Imperial Japan.
It's like the Byzantine Empire being represented with the Paliologos dynasty flag, when in most of It's history they used the double headed eagle or the Chi Ro symbol
If the civil ensign wasn't an official flag, why was it covering the coffins during the funeral of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife? Shouldn't they be coverd with Habsurg's flag instead?
I had never seen that before but you're right
m.ruclips.net/video/zjP2Rwk6Jj8/видео.html
it was
he is simply arguing it shouldn't be used there (and I'm not even 100% sure he is right)
on the other hand, Franz Ferdinand was Archduke of Austria and Royal Prince of Hungary
the gold-black imperial flag was... the IMPERIAL flag
His funeral was recorded?
The continuous echo-y effect makes this seem extremely terrifying
So this is what it's like to find a cool channel early on before it gets big. Great video!
There is also the 1991-1993 Russian flag. It is consistently portrayed on Wikipedia with a lighter blue than the modern Russian flag, but in reality if you look at most photos from that time the hue was the same. It's just that someone looked at old sunbleached flags and photos for reference.
.
The one hoisted at the Kremlin was lighter though
The Alash Autonomy flag on Wikipedia is a bit weird... and I mean, the one on the right. A source called "Central Asian Khanates" says that the flag of the Alash Orda State / Alash Autonomy was a red background with a yellow crescent moon and star, but Wikipedia says it is just a white background with a yellow tent in the center. Which one is real?
I love your frantic presentation style with the swooping text
Thank you!
This not only satisfied my need for arbitrary trivia but also my need for vexillological facts. 10/10
My god they actually started an edit war because of a flag 💀. At this point we fr just make flags up for countries that dont have a flag and everyone thinks its actually the flag. The guy who changed the austria-hungary flag is a hero
Most historical countries either never had a national flag or really only had a symbol they would fly which could be adjusted to be defined as a "national flag" today. Rome, for example, never had a national flag, but representing their civil standard of SPQR as a flag is a fine way of approximating one for a modern audience. Personally, I think the civil ensign of Austria-Hungary is the best approximation of it as an entity; Austria-Hungary was never a country in the first place, but two under a complex union. It is like using the Cross of Burgundy to represent Habsburg Spain (which Wikipedia does); that flag was obviously not the flag of every individual kingdom and duchy under the Spanish Habsburgs, but it is a good umbrella representation for them, as the Cross of Burgundy was a symbol of the Habsburgs. I support the civil ensign. I think this debate is arbitrary.
In that case the yellow-black flag of the Empire would be more fitting, according to your comparison, but again, that would be wrong.
@@FreddieHg37 I made two examples for a reason. The point is that Austria-Hungary wasn't a country, neither was Habsburg Spain to reiterate that example. The SPQR phrase could be equivicated to a civil standard (thereby, ensign), and people accept the use of that symbol as Rome's "flag." Both are potential answers to this question, because this question has no definitive answer. I should've mentioned that Austria's imperial flag I also consider an acceptable flag to use in this case as well. Neither the civil ensign or solely Austria's flag are completely correct in displaying the entity that was Austria-Hungary, but there's plenty enough precedent of other countries using civil ensigns or other popular symbols when there is no official one for their flag, so saying the civil ensign is 100% wrong isn't correct itself.
@@spaghettiking7312 sure, keep gaslighting yourself bub…
Now that makes me want to check what they use for the HRE
Ahh, the english page has the imperial banner and a link to the flags of the HRE, while the german page doesn't even have any infobox, which clearly shows the difference in perception of how much of a nation it actually was.
Not going to lie, was shocked when I found out the Austro-Hungarian flag wasn't really the Austro-Hungarian flag. My head hurts now after believing this to be the Austro-Hungarian flag for god who knows how long.
It's funny how on Wikipedia it had a red filling and on the flag opposite the pope had the red filling, yet it's still wrong
Right, that picture definitely gave me pause about whether the red was wrong or not. If the official documents are to be followed, that means the Wikipedia error may have become so prevalent even organizations like the UN are accidentally purchasing the incorrect flag.
@@nojrants Hm
In the Spanish version of Wikipedia, the process to remove the civil ensign was far more peaceful and the main hero who made it possible was Virum Mundi.
Funnily enough Battlefield 1 managed to not use the civil ensign flag for the Austro-Hungarian faction, only problem is that they put the coat of arms on the black and yellow flag