210 years ago today, when the flag of the still relatively-young republic had only fifteen stars, on September 14, 1814, an American lawyer by the name of Francis Scott Key published a poem he’d written upon witnessing the bombardment of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy during the War of 1812.
The poem was soon set to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven,” itself a popular arrangement on both sides of the Atlantic. It took several more decades (eighty or so) until things got well and truly sorted and the song–and the tune–were adopted as the National Anthem of the United States of America.
The rest, as they say, is history:
Thank you, Francis Scott Key. Thank you, United States of America.
