The islands of Turks and Caicos are located in the Atlantic just north of the Caribbean Sea and, by and large, have pretty fantastic weather. Temperatures hit the low 70s (Fahrenheit) in the winter and peak in the high 80s in the summer, which is to say that in general, the islands are as tropical as their location would suggest. Certainly, it rarely gets cold there, and snow is unheard of.

Which makes its now-antiquated flag a bit weird — because there was an igloo on it.

From 1889 until 1968, the official flag of Turks and Caicos looked like this:

Everything (coloring aside) is the same — but now, the igloos on the beach have no doors. Nor should they, because they’re not igloos. They’re piles of salt. That’s consistent with the history of the Turks and Caicos. As Wikipedia notes, the processing of sea salt was a major factor in the early settlement of the islands by Europeans. The badge is a reference to this industry, and the white things are salt, not ice.

But in transferring the design to the flag, someone made a mistake. Over the years, the UK published something called the Admiralty Flag Book, which (among other things) dictated what the flags of overseas territories should look like. As the Times of the Islands (a Turks and Caicos publication) explains, in 1889, the artist who drew the Turks and Caicos flag for the Flag Book “mistakenly thought [the salt piles] were buildings (or igloos) and inserted a doorway into one of the heaps.” As a result, the official flag of these tropical islands had an accidental igloo on it for nearly eighty years.

In 1968, Turks and Caicos adopted a coat of arms which replaced the badge on its now-current flag, seen here. It features a conch horn, a lobster, and an indigenous cactus — and no Arctic abode (or salt).