The national flag of Bangladesh, was adopted officially on 17 January 1972. It consists of a red disc on top of a dark green banner. The red disc is offset slightly toward the hoist so that it appears centered when the flag is flying. While there are many interpretations, according to Shib Narayan Das who put the map on the first flag design, green on the flag represented the landscape and the red circle represented the sun, symbolising a new day and end of oppression. The flag is based on a similar flag used during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, which had a yellow map of the country inside the red disc. In 1972 this map was removed from the flag. One reason given was the difficulty for rendering the map correctly on both sides of the flag. The civil ensign and naval ensign place it in the canton of a red or white field, respectively. (Source: Wikipedia.org, CC BY-SA)