American's newfound sense of patriotism after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is an obvious example.
"If you could paint red, white and blue on the back of a donkey, you could have sold the donkey," Humphrys Flag Co. owner Brian O'Connor said from the company's corporate headquarters in Philadelphia.
"It was incredible. The demand was completely off the charts. It was 10 times the demand during the 1991 Gulf War. It was beyond comprehension. In the first two to three weeks, everything manufactured was sold that day. It felt like the demand was unusually strong for about nine months."
The Humphrys store in Philadelphia, on Arch Street across from the Betsy Ross Museum, was overwhelmed with customers on the day of the attacks. The line snaked a quarter of a mile to Market Street, O'Connor said.
O'Connor, whose operation makes 90 percent of its flags in its Pottstown plant, said that with the latest Iraq war over, the flag business has stabilized. Not that the war created much of a sales spike. In fact, compared with Sept. 11, the Iraq war didn't greatly increase the demand for American flags, he said.
"It's a very normal year," O'Connor said. "I was surprised there wasn't more patriotism with the war. It was a mild peak in sales, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for business. You don't always want those jumps."
Ung Chon, the owner of the Army Navy Store in Pottstown, sold more flags than usual after the attacks. The sales increase was good for business, naturally. But because of the circumstances, it's business Chon would rather not have had.
"It's not a good thing," Chon said. "After Sept. 11, everybody had some different feelings."
Those feelings apparently included fear or at least a desire to prepare for the worst. With the threat of a chemical weapons attack then a strong possibility in the minds of many Americans, Army Navy stores, including Chon's, had difficulty keeping gas masks on the shelves.
Since then, though, gas masks have not been in demand, Chon said. Flag sales declined after Sept. 11, and there wasn't much of a rebound during the war.
He wasn't expecting the second anniversary of the attacks to generate any extra business, either.
The emotions generated by Sept. 11 were much greater than those nearly two years later when the war in Iraq began, according to companies that sell patriotic products.
Nationally, the second anniversary of the attacks is shaping up to be much more low-key than last year's anniversary.
Executives at the major TV networks have said no prime-time Sept. 11 specials are planned, which stands in stark contrast to last year, when the networks devoted most of their broadcast day to Sept. 11 coverage, including a commemorative concert aired by NBC.
Matt Conway, the vice president of sales and a part-owner of Flagzone, a flag manufacturer at the Circle of Progress in Pottstown, said the recent war did help flag sales a bit, but not necessarily American flags. POW and MIA flags enjoyed more brisk sales, and, he added, so did British flags because of that country's support of the war effort.
Regardless of current events, the period between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July is always the annual peak period for flag sellers, Conway and O'Connor said.
"Flags do what people do that time of year, and that's go outside," O'Connor said.
Like O'Connor, Conway said the demand for flags has stabilized.
But even during its average periods, the flag business now is better than ever, he contends.
"The Desert Storm war kind of regenerated patriotism and flying flags, and 9/11 blew that away," Conway said. "People went bananas in terms of flags. In general, there's more American flags now than ever."
O'Connor sees things differently. The Humphrys owner said the newfound patriotism falls way short of the country's post-World War II pride.
"Right after World War II, every single house and every single business in Pottstown would be flying a U.S. flag," O'Connor said.
By 1955, that number dropped to about 75 percent, and he estimates that fell to 50 percent by 1965.
"And if you look at Pottstown now," he said, "and it's not a special holiday, you're probably seeing only 10 percent of the houses flying flags."
And with many people flying flags only during holidays, the need to replace flags has declined.
"When people are flying flags 100 percent of the time, they replace them every two or three years," O'Connor said. Based on the passage above, How did the Iraq War and other events impact the demand for American flags and patriotic products? How did businesses react to changes in demand?
This prompt doesn't seem malicious.