The flag of Finland called siniristilippu, dates from the beginning of the 20th century. On a white background, it features a blue Nordic cross; the state flag is otherwise identical to the civil flag. The swallow-tailed state flag is used by the military; the presidential standard is identical to the swallow-tailed state flag but has in its upper left corner the Cross of Liberty after the Order of the Cross of Liberty, which has the President of Finland as its Grand Master. Like Sweden's, Finland's national flag is based on the Scandinavian cross, it was adopted after independence from Russia, when many patriotic Finns wanted a special flag for their country, but its design dates back to the 19th century. The blue colouring is said to represent the country's thousands of lakes and the sky, with white for the snow that covers the land in winter; this colour combination has been used over the centuries in various Finnish provincial and town flags. The first known "Flag of Finland" was presented in 1848, along with the national anthem Maamme.

Its motif was the coat of arms of Finland, surrounded by laurel leaves, on a white flag. The current blue-crossed design was first used in Finland by Nyländska Jaktklubben, a yacht club founded in Helsinki in 1861. In addition to the blue cross on the white background, the yacht club flag had the crowned arms of the province of Uusimaa within two crossed branches in the upper hoist quarter. Except for the position of the cross, the flag was similar to the flag of the St. Petersburg Yacht Club, founded the previous year; the design can be traced to the Russian Navy ensign, which has a blue cross saltire on a white background. During the Crimean War, Finnish merchant ships captured by the British-French fleet flew a flag called Flag of St. George, based on the Russian Customs flag. In this variant, the cross was thinner than in the modern flag, the proportions were equal. Another blue-cross flag was made official in 1861 for private vessels. In 1910, in connection with Russification of Finland, the Russian authorities decreed that a Russian flag was to be added to the canton.

However, this was met with resistance. Instead, a triangular pennant without this modification was flown, thereby circumventing the decree concerning flags. Shortly after Finland gained independence in 1917, a competition was held for the design of the Finnish flag. Several different designs were submitted. Regarding the colours, the entries fell into two categories – one using the red and yellow from the Finnish coat of arms, the other using the present blue and white colours. One entry with a yellow cross on a red background. Another entry had diagonal blue and white stripes, but it was criticized as being more suitable for a barber shop than a newly independent country. Akseli Gallen-Kallela proposed a similar cross flag, but with colors inverted, but this was considered too similar to the Swedish flag and the Greek flag of the time. Artists Eero Snellman and Bruno Tuukkanen specified the final form of the flag; the state flag was further modified in 1922, when the coronet was removed, again in 1978 when the shield-shaped coat of arms was changed into a rectangular shape.

Under Finnish law, the ratio of the flag is 11:18 close to the golden ratio. The swallow-tailed state flag is one unit longer and the tails are five units long; the cusp width of the blue cross is three units of measure, giving a ratio set of 4:3:4 and 5:3:10. When flown from a flagpole, the flag is recommended to have a width equalling one sixth of the height of the pole; the Finnish flag is used in three main variants. The usual national flag is used by all citizens and Finnish municipalities and regions. Anyone is allowed to fly the national flag; the rectangular state flag is used by bodies of the Finnish national and provincial governments, by the Cathedral Chapters of the two national churches, non-naval vessels of the state. The swallow-tailed national flag, the naval ensign, is flown by the Finnish Defence Forces; the presidential standard and the command signs of the Minister of Defence, Chief of Defence, Commander of the Finnish Navy are flown only by the respective persons. All public bodies as well as most private citizens and corporations fly the flag on official flag days.

In addition to the official flag days, there are about ten unofficial but observed flag days. Besides flag days no flags or corporate flags are flown; the Finnish flag is raised at 8 am and lowered at sunset, however not than 9 pm. On independence day, the flag is flown until 8 pm regardless of the dark. On the occasion of great national tragedies, the ministry of interior may recommend flying the flag at half mast throughout the country; as a special custom in Finland, the flag is flown at Midsummer from 6 pm of Midsummer eve until 9 pm of Midsummer's day. This is done to symbolize the fact that the darkness does not come to any part of Finland during Midsummer's Night. Midsummer is celebrated as the day of the Finnish flag; the colours are defined in both CIE 1931 and CIE 1976 standards, Swedish standard SS 01 91 22 and by the Pantone Matching System: There is no official RGB definition for the colors, because its color gamut is too narrow. From the CIE L*a*b* colors the unofficial approximations in sRGB are: blue R=24, G=68, B=126, red R=181, G=28, B=49 and yellow R=237, G=167, B=0.

The yellow

The Munro-Hawkins House is a historic house on Vermont Route 7A in southern Shaftsbury, Vermont. Built in 1807, it is a well-preserved example of transitional Georgian-Federal period architecture, designed by local master builder Lavius Fillmore, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The Munro-Hawkins House is located in southern Shaftsbury, on the east side of Vermont 7A, north of its junction with Airport Road, it is a two-story wood frame structure, five bays wide, with a side gable roof, clapboard siding, two interior brick chimneys. A single-story gabled ell extends to the rear of the west-facing main block. Fluted Ionic pilasters articulate the building corners and flank the central front bay, supporting an entablature and modillioned cornice; the main entrance is flanked by slender Ionic columns, is topped by a fanlight window that breaks a gabled pediment. Above the entry is a Palladian window, its windows separated by pilasters, with a gabled pediment. A small gable rises on the roof above.

The gable ends at the sides of the house are pedimented, have half-round windows at their centers. The interior, organized in a central hall plan, retains original marble fireplace surrounds and woodwork; the house was built in 1807, is attributed to Lavius Fillmore, a noted regional master builder. It was built for Joseph Munro, a wealthy farmer, served as a farmhouse for many years, it represents a high-quality local example of transitional architecture between the Georgian and Federal styles. National Register of Historic Places listings in Bennington County, Vermont

Brian Paul Schmidt is the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University. He was a Distinguished Professor, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and astrophysicist at the University's Mount Stromlo Observatory and Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, he is known for his research in using supernovae as cosmological probes. He holds an Australia Research Council Federation Fellowship and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012. Schmidt shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, making him the only Montana-born Nobel laureate. Schmidt, an only child, was born on 24 February 1967, in Missoula, where his father Dana C. Schmidt was a fisheries biologist; when he was 13, his family relocated to Alaska. Schmidt attended Bartlett High School in Anchorage and graduated in 1985, he has said that he wanted to be a meteorologist "since I was about five-years-old...

I did some work at the USA National Weather Service up in Anchorage and didn't enjoy it much. It was less scientific, not as exciting as I thought it would be—there was a lot of routine, but I guess I was just a little naive about what being a meteorologist meant." His decision to study astronomy, which he had seen as "a minor pastime", was made just before he enrolled at university. He was not committed: he said "I'll do astronomy and change into something else later", just never made that change, he graduated with a BS and BS from the University of Arizona in 1989. He received his AM in 1992 and PhD in 1993 from Harvard University. Schmidt's PhD thesis was supervised by Robert Kirshner and used Type II Supernovae to measure the Hubble Constant. While at Harvard, he met his future wife, the Australian Jennifer M. Gordon, a PhD student in economics. In 1994, they moved to Australia. Schmidt was a postdoctoral research Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics before moving on to the ANU's Mount Stromlo Observatory in 1995.

In 1994, Schmidt and Nicholas B. Suntzeff formed the High-Z Supernova Search Team to measure the expected deceleration of the universe and the deceleration parameter using distances to Type Ia supernovae. In 1995, the HZT at a meeting at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics elected Schmidt as the overall leader of the HZT. Schmidt led the team from Australia and in 1998 in the HZT paper with first author Adam Riess the first evidence was presented that the universe's expansion rate is not decelerating; the team's observations were contrary to the then-current models, which predicted that the expansion of the universe should be slowing down, when the preliminary results emerged Schmidt assumed it was an error and he spent the next six weeks trying to find the mistake. But there was no mistake: contrary to expectations, by monitoring the brightness and measuring the redshift of the supernovae, they discovered that these billion-year old exploding stars and their galaxies were accelerating away from our reference frame.

This result was found nearly by the Supernova Cosmology Project, led by Saul Perlmutter. The corroborating evidence between the two competing studies led to the acceptance of the accelerating universe theory and initiated new research to understand the nature of the universe, such as the existence of dark energy; the discovery of the accelerating universe was named'Breakthrough of the Year' by Science in 1998, Schmidt was jointly awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Riess and Perlmutter for their groundbreaking work. Schmidt is leading the SkyMapper telescope Project and the associated Southern Sky Survey, which will encompass billions of individual objects, enabling the team to pick out the most unusual objects. In 2014 they announced the discovery of the first star which did not contain any iron, indicating that it is a primitive star formed during the first rush of star formation following the Big Bang, he is the chairman of the board of directors of Astronomy Australia Limited, he serves on the management committee of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics.

In July 2012 Schmidt was given a three-year appointment to sit on the Questacon Advisory Council. As of March 2017, Schmidt serves as a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Board of Sponsors. On 24 June 2015 it was announced Schmidt would replace Ian Young as the 12th Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University, to commence his tenure on 1 January 2016; the Chancellor of the ANU, Professor Gareth Evans, said, "Brian Schmidt is superbly placed to deliver on the ambition of ANU founders – to permanently secure our position among the great universities of the world, as a crucial contributor to the nation... We had a stellar field of international and Australian candidates, have chosen an inspirational leader.... Brian's vision, global stature and communication skills are going to take our national university to places it has never been before." The publicity that came with winning the Nobel Prize has given Schmidt the opportunity to help the public understand why science is important to society, to champion associated causes.

Public education One of his first acts after winning the Nobel Prize was to donate $100,000 out of his prize money to the PrimaryConnections program, an initiative of the Australian Academy of Science that assists primary school teachers. He has continued to press for improvements to the public school system in the sciences and mathematical literacy (numeracy