"Oh say can you see..."

June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the stars and stripes as the official flag for the United States of America. The number of alternating red and white stripes represented the 13 colonies as did the stars.

At the Battle of Baltimore of 1814, The Star Spangled Banner was written by Francis Scott Key while he watched the British bombard Fort McHenry. On the morning of September 14, the flag still flew, indicating that there was no surrender. 

The flag that flew over Fort McHenry turns 200 this September. Major George Armistead, the commander of the fort, commissioned Mary Pickersgill to make a garrison flag. The flag Mary Pickersgill made was 30 feet by 42 feet, with the stars measuring 2 feet across. 

This flag now resides on display at the Smithsonian American History Museum in Washington, DC. The museum asks that everyone sing the national anthem on June 14 in honor of the 200th anniversary of the Star Spangled Banner that inspired our national anthem. 

http://anthemforamerica.smithsonian.com

"O say, can you see by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed 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 bomb’s 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!

On that shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?

Now it catches the beam, of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream;

‘Tis the star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

O, thus be it ever where freemen shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!

Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven rescued land

Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto, “In god is our trust”;

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!"