Just before the start of sporting events and conventions around America, children and adults stand and sing — usually off-key — the “Star Spangled Banner,” America’s national anthem.
The song was written by Francis Scott Key, an American lawyer, during the War of 1812. Key was watching a British attack on Baltimore’s Fort McHenry and he saw fiery bombs explode in the air above the fort. He also saw a huge American flag, the star-spangled banner, flying over the fort. Standing there, Key wrote on the back of an envelope the words that are the basis of the anthem.
In 1931, almost 150 years later, Congress voted to make Key’s song the national anthem. Band leader John Philip Sousa wrote a musical arrangement of the song in the 1890s for military use, and this version remains the one we use today.
“O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?