Wikipedia had wrong Vatican flag for years – now incorrect flags are everywhere
This feels like the author jumped to the conclusion that Wikipedia was at fault because it's a common enough story and sounded good, but it doesn't add up. See addaon's comment for an explanation of why heraldry here isn't as cut-and-dry as we're used to for, say, the US flag.But even aside from that, the author neglected to check the full edit history on the Wikipedia file: the very first version of the flag (25 Nov 2005) had the red tiara that the article decries, citing Open Clip Art as the source [0]. That suggests the "wrong" version was already highly circulated before Wikipedia got the image.The caption on the main photo goes so far as to suggest that the Vatican itself is using Wikipedia as a source for printing its flags. Indeed, the UN has a photo of the flag of the Vatican shortly after it was raised there in 2015, and that flag has the red tiara [1]. It's hard to imagine the flag flown at the UN being done as a rush job from a Wikipedia article.It's a cute story, but it looks like the simpler truth is that the Vatican doesn't particularly care about the coloring of the tiara.EDIT: Kudos to zokier for finding a Twitter thread with more examples [2]. Apparently the flag taken to the moon and back by Apollo 11 had the red tiara.[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of...[1] https://dam.media.un.org/asset-management/2AM9LO46AB5A?FR_=1...[2] zokier's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36118232