George Armistead to make a flag for Fort McHenry. This flag, which measured 30 feet by 42 feet, was the original ...

They didn’t know until they saw the flag that we’d won, so this is the genesis of the poem. O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Enjoy a little red, white, and blue from across the Smithsonian. Visit the O Say Can You See blog for pointers on U.S. Flag Code, or learn more about the Star-Spangled Banner at the Smithsonian's ...

“The Star-Spangled Banner” was composed by Francis Scott Key, a Maryland attorney, slaveholder and poet, who was inspired by watching soldiers raise the flag over Baltimore’s Fort McHenry ...

Upon his release, during the early hours of September 14, 1814, Key was heartened to see that the American flag (also referred to as the “Star-Spangled Banner”) was still flying – marking a ...

The Star Spangled Banner is part of a poem about a battle ... bombs bursting in air” and still the American flag was visible over the “ramparts” of Fort McHenry, at great peril to those ...