Last modified: 2005-01-29 by santiago dotor
Keywords: siam | stripes: 2 (white) |
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![[Siam 1916-1917 (Thailand)]](../images/t/th-1916.gif)
by Mark Sensen
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The story goes that during the 1916 flood the king of Siam —since 26th June 1939 called Thailand— saw the national flag —red with a white elephant— hanging upside down. Because of the distress a new flag was adopted that couldn't be hung upside down. Initially it was a red field with two white bands, but on 28th September 1917, the middle stripe was changed to blue to show solidarity with the Allies during the First World War. The name of the flag is therefore Trairanga, meaning tricolour. The proportions of the flag are 2:3, while the stripes are arranged 1-1-2-1-1. Sources: Crampton 1992; Jos Poels 1990; Crampton 1991.
From contributions by
Roy Stilling, 21 February 1996
Jan Oskar Engene, 3 October 1996 and
Mark Sensen, 3 March 1997
From the Singha Beer source:
After a while the white elephant flag was changed to a striped flag with two horizontal stripes —one red, the other white— flanking a blue stripe running across the middle. In B.E. 2460 [1917 AD], the King issued a decree in which he christened the new national flag —the one that has been in use ever since— the trairanga or tricolor.
Santiago Dotor, 26 October 1999
During the reign of