Today marks Flag Day and the U.S. Army’s 241st birthday

Today is Flag Day. The day marks the adoption of the American flag by the Continental Congress in the First Flag Resolution of June 14, 1777. The first resolution signified the flag should be “13 stripes alternate red and white: that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

The U.S. Army, founded on this day in 1775, is also celebrating its 241st birthday.

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A U.S. Army Reserve officer was among those killed in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, according to Military.com.

Antonio Davon Brown, 29, was a captain in the Army Reserve and slain in the attack Sunday at an Orlando nightclub, according to Cynthia Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Brown was a member of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) while a student at Florida A&M University.

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The Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Orlando is providing emergency mental health assistance to people affected by the bloody rampage at a nightclub early Sunday that killed 49 and left 53 wounded.

In a statement released Monday afternoon, the VA said its services would be available to veterans and department employees, as well as the general public "in the wake of the tragic mass shooting."

Police say Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S. citizen and Muslim who lived in Fort Pierce, Florida, entered The Pulse, a gay nightspot, early Sunday morning and opened fire with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm Glock handgun.

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President Barack Obama echoed Monday the U.S. military and State Department warnings that mounting battlefield losses for ISIS could lead to “distraction” terror attacks like the mass shooting that occurred in Orlando over the weekend.

The progress made by U.S.-backed local forces in Iraq, Syria and now Libya against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, can motivate sympathizers outside the Mideast “to take actions against people here in the United States and elsewhere in the world that are tragic,” Obama said.

He said that “one of the biggest challenges we are going to have is this kind of propaganda and perversions of Islam that you see generated on the internet, and the capacity for that to seep into the minds of troubled individuals or weak individuals.”

Obama spoke at the White House after closed-door meetings with FBI Director James Comey, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and others on the worst mass shooting in U.S. history at the Pulse nightclub frequented by the LGBT community, a horrific attack that went on for three hours in Orlando early Sunday morning.

This story was originally published June 14, 2016 at 1:30 PM with the headline "Today marks Flag Day and the U.S. Army’s 241st birthday."