The Coolest ''''Country''''' Flag You Need To Know

Antarctica is Earth's coolest continent, and the most complicatedly claimed continent. Yet sadly, it has no official flag to unite her. Nay, you might say. There's this! And that flag is Antarctica-associated, but it's not official official, and comes with an ownership asterisk we must attend to.

But first, Antarctica doesn't have an official flag because she's not an official country. Yes, humans have “settled”, depending on how much you want to stretch that word, on the ice sheet, with scientific outposts, but each is operated by a parent country, protecting their somewhat precarious claims, so not really looking for a new banner to band everyone behind. Thus, there are no Antarctic citizens to officiate anything. But, who cares?

People everywheres want to fly flags, and come on, the continent has cried out for one, right from the first in 1929 when an early research vessel flew a white sheet as a flag of courtesy for passing through Antarctica's waters. Even though there were naught but penguins to appreciate the gesture. T’was done just for the fun of flying a flag with what the ship happened to have on hand.

But since this rather literal representation of the snow-covered continent is not the most inspired design, it didn’t catch on and penguins only spotted it sporadically on subsequent ships. And it stayed that way until 1997, with a curious development as a company, Multimedia Corporation, was developing a video game: The 3D World Atlas. And yes, for nerdy nineties kids, a digital atlas totally counted as a game. Multi Co noticed Antarctica's flag absence and deputized a designer to draw one.

Who took a cue from the U.N., which on their flag views the world from atop, so Antarctica would be the same from abottom, and borrowed the same colors as a nod to neutrality. So it was through this game that this design debuted to young flag fans everywhere. Including some who would grow up to end up on Antarctica, ‘eh? And it's a great flag and I'm not here to FUD it, buuuut its origin does raise some questions of copyright.

Unlike the original white sheet, uncopyrightable, as it's nothing and old enough to be in the public domain anyway. Not so with the 1997 design. And while its creator makes no claim to copyright, saying the flag is de facto public domain, what usually happens when a company commissions content is the company controls that content’s copyright. So of course, on finding this out, one might think to email Multimedia Corporation about it, but they went bust.

And now, with no one to ask, it becomes a question of who could claim to claim the copyright. [Curiously] How hard could that be to find out? And, in this moment, standing at the threshold of a research question that could easily cost months of my life, I swore to myself. So I just let myself do a bit of basic Bing-ing. Ugh, that sounds very strange to say.

And tracked Multimedia Corporation and their un-Bing-able, hmm, name through two potential lines of ownership. One through multiple corporate asset acquisitions and name changes that ended up in a Malta company that seemingly has nothing to do with video games, and the other line led to E.A…. everyone’s favorite developer, dedicated to the who was the original distributor of the Atlas. Under what terms, I didn’t ask, because I did not wish to open their evil eye upon any of this, and doubtless neither of these companies have heard anything about the Atlas and its flag, so let’s all just promise to keep it that way, shall we?

Great. Now we can finally talk about what happened next. See, in 2018, a new Antarctic flag, public domain, came on the scene. It starts with the snow and ice white sheet from before, but adds above the dark skies that dominate the continent for six months a year. A mountain in the center uplifts, for unlike in the north, there's an actual land under the ice, and it casts a shadow to create the symbol of a compass pointing south.

Which, as a bonus, makes this design mirror the northernmost flag on the northernmost continent just with flipped color placement for flipped pole placement. Very satisfying and unique among flags. It creates a 3D effect that gives just a touch of a technocool, appropriate with how much tech was needed to “conquer” this coolest continent. And it's totally not, but I'm just going to call it, [gleefully] that this 3D effect is also a nod to the 3D World Atlas, connecting this flag to both of its forebearers.

Perfect. I could talk about flags all day, but I swore to keep it short. So I just wanted to let everyone know that when you spot this rare flag, it is of Antarctica. So that for anyone watching this video, when you see your flag fly high, know that others know how awesome it is and have that brighten a day out of six months of dark. [Earthy music]