Bald eagle 1782, the Continental Congress adopted the design for the Great Seal of the United States depicting a bald eagle grasping 13 arrows and an olive branch with its talons. The bald eagle appears on most official seals of the U.S. government, including the presidential seal, the presidential flag, and in the logos of many U.S. federal agencies. Between 1916 and 1945, the presidential flag (but not the seal) showed an eagle facing to its left (the viewer's right), which gave rise to the urban legend that the flag is changed to have the eagle face towards the olive branch in
Great Seal of the United States current die is the seventh, and was made in 1986. [[File:US Dorsett seal.jpg|thumb|Dorsett seal, reversed photography]] In 1894 Palemon Howard Dorsett, a lifelong Department of Agriculture employee, turned up at the Department of State with a metal die engraved with the Great Seal, claiming it had originally been given to his family by a nephew of [[George Washington]]. It was examined by [[Gaillard Hunt]], the author of a pamphlet on the Great Seal, who agreed that it appeared to be contemporaneous with the original 1782 seal, but he took no further interest in the matter. Decades later, in 1936, Dorsett