This is the national flag of Thailand. The original flag was pure red in colour, but this resulted in Thai diplomats being ridiculed for their unimaginative flag designs. In 1855 the flag was changed to include a white elephant (a royal symbol) on a red background. The white elephant can still be seen in the Thai Naval Ensign, shown below:
In 1916 the flag was changed again, to the current design, although with the middle colour being red, not blue. The story behind this change is that the king saw the flag hanging upside down during a flood. Patriotic citizens would never allow their flag to be flown upside-down, and so to ease the burden of the good Thai people during floods and other natural disasters, the king decided to create a symmetrical flag that simply could not be hung upside down.
In 1917 (only one year later) the flag was changed again so that the centre stripe was made blue, which in Thailand is the colour of Friday. This was done as part of a marketing campaign to attract more tourist dollars to the country. Unfortunately, the marketing campaign failed miserably due to other nations not assigning colours to the days of the week, yet the flag remains the same to this day.
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