The flag of Barbados was designed by Grantley W. Prescod and was officially adopted to represent the nation of Barbados at midnight on 30 November 1966, the day the country gained independence. The flag was chosen as part of a nationwide open contest held by the government, with Prescod's design being selected as the winner of a field of over one thousand entries. The flag is a triband design, with the outermost stripes coloured ultramarine, to represent the sea and the sky, and the middle stripe coloured gold, to represent the sand. Within the middle band is displayed the head of a trident. This trident is meant to represent the trident of Poseidon, visible in Barbados's colonial coat of arms, and the fact that it is broken is meant to represent the severed ties between Barbados and the United Kingdom, of which it was long a colony. (Source: Wikipedia.org, CC BY-SA)