Air Date: Week of April 18, 1997

Facts about... the Earth flag.

Transcript

CURWOOD: It's Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood

(Music up and under)

CURWOOD: It's been given to presidents, heads of state, and dignitaries across the globe. The anthropologist Margaret Mead carried one around with her for 8 years until her death. It's the Earth flag. The Earth flag was created in 1970 by John McConnell, an early leader in the international peace movement. It's now the universal symbol of Earth Day. Mr. McConnell had a simple design. Inspired by photos of Earth taken from space during NASA's Apollo 10 mission, he placed a picture of the planet against a dark blue background. That basic design remains unchanged today. But the Earth flag isn't the only environmental flag. In 1969, cartoonist Ron Cobb created an environmental symbol by combining the letters "E" for environment and "O" for organisms. Similar to the Greek letter theta. In 1970, Look Magazine fashioned an ecology flag. The gold colored symbol stood for Thanatos, Greek for death, to indicate a warning to the Earth's environment. The flag's stripes were green for the unspoiled land, and white for the pure air. And for this week, that's the Living on Earth Almanac.