Flag of Sweden cross pattée. Other historians claim that the Swedish flag was blue with a white cross before 1420, and became blue with a golden cross only during the early reign King Gustav I, who deposed King Christian II in 1521. The exact age of the Swedish flag is not known, but the oldest recorded pictures of a blue cloth with a yellow cross date from the early 16th century, during the reign of King Gustav I. The first legal description of the flag was made in a royal warrant of 19 April 1562 as "yellow in a cross fashioned on blue".
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima the following decades, Rosenthal repeatedly and vociferously denied claims that the flag-raising was staged. "I don't think it is in me to do much more of this sort of thing ... I don't know how to get across to anybody what 50 years of constant repetition means." President Franklin D. Roosevelt, upon seeing Joe Rosenthal's flag-raising photograph, realized the image would make an excellent symbol for the upcoming Seventh War Loan Drive to help pay for the war, and ordered the flag-raisers identified and sent to Washington, D.C. after the fighting on the island ended (March 26, 1945). Using a