Flag: Ascension Island

A remote volcanic British island with its own flag, so it gets an emoji. Flag emoji are built from two-letter region codes, and AC is the code Unicode lists for Ascension Island.

Ascension sits almost alone in the South Atlantic, roughly 1,600 km from Africa and 2,200 km from Brazil. It is part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. Nobody is native to it: the island is a dry volcanic cone that Portuguese sailors named after Ascension Day in 1503 and that Britain garrisoned in 1815 so no one could use it to rescue Napoleon from his exile on Saint Helena. Today roughly 800 people live there, and adults generally need a work contract to stay, mostly with the airbase, the communications stations or the government.

What visitors remember is the odd mix: a lava desert at sea level, a cloud forest on Green Mountain that Victorian scientists planted on purpose, beaches where green turtles haul out to nest, and Wideawake Airfield, the long runway shared by the British and US air forces that was once a backup landing strip for the Space Shuttle.

What does the flag look like, and what does sending it mean?

Someone is talking about Ascension Island, often because they are there. The island adopted its own flag in 2013: a Blue Ensign, the dark-blue British flag with the Union Jack in the corner, carrying the island's coat of arms, which shows green turtles and the sooty terns locals call wideawake birds. Before that, the plain Union Jack flew.

In messages it works like any country flag: a location tag on a photo, a travel update, a note from someone posted to the airbase, or a line-up of the three territory flags 🇸🇭🇦🇨🇹🇦. It carries no hidden second meaning. On devices without the artwork the pair shows as the letters AC, so add the island's name when your reader might be puzzled.