Austria

The story goes that one of the early rulers of Austria wore a white tunic in battle one day, and the battle was so bloody that the entire tunic was bloodstained by the end of the fighting. When he took his belt off, however, the part of the tunic protected by the belt was still white. However, I haven't been able to trace the name of the particular ruler or what battle it was he was fighting in. At any rate, true or not, that legend is the origin of the modern Austrian flag . Mike Oettle, 15 March 2002