Qatar, Bahrain, and Legends

When I was a kid, one of my favorite things to do with an old dictionary we had was to look at the countries' flags. It really is the basis for half this blog, I guess. One pair I couldn't get over was Qatar and Bahrain. They looked like a kid like me drew them.

Here's Qatar:

And here's Bahrain:

The number of points mean different things to different countries, but the design philosophy can't be too different. One of the legends was that originally Qatar had a similar flag to Bahrain, in that it was red and not maroon:

That flag was official. The legend stated that the sun bleached the red to the maroon they use, but that's not the case; it was voluntarily changed.

You can't make this stuff up...