National Anthem Day: Interesting Facts About 'The Star-Spangled Banner'

National Anthem Day is observed on March 3 to commemorate the adoption of "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the National Anthem of the U.S.

The poem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," was written by Francis Scott Key, from Maryland, in 1814, while he was on the deck of a ship during the Battle of Fort McHenry. Key was held in the ship by the British troops while he negotiated the release of Dr. William Beans, a prisoner of war accused of misleading the troops. Key, who witnessed the attack on Fort McHenry, expected the American troops to have lost the battle. However, the next morning, he saw the American flag flying over Fort McHenry, which inspired him to write the poem.

There were several versions of the poem in circulation by the early 1900s, and American President Woodrow Wilson asked the Bureau of Education to standardize it to make one official version. The poem was eventually made the National Anthem of the U.S. on March 3, 1931.

"One of the powerful things about music, and a powerful thing about an anthem — it builds community when we sing it together," Mark Clague, founder of the Star-Spangled Music Foundation, describes how the poem unites people across the country.

On this National Anthem Day, here are some interesting facts about "The Star-Spangled Banner" that you would like to know:

1. The poem was first sung at a sporting event at a baseball game in Brooklyn in 1862.
2. The standardized version of the poem was first performed on Dec. 5, 1917.
3. The poem was originally named "The Defense of Fort McHenry" and sung in the melody of an old English drinking song called "To Anacreon in Heaven"
4. The flag described in the song is displayed at the Smithsonian National Museum in Washington, D.C.
5. The original version of the poem had only four verses. However, a fifth verse was added during the Civil War.
6. The Union army translated the song into German during the Civil War for recruiting German soldiers and since then, the song has been translated into several other languages.
7. Jimi Hendrix performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and is still considered as one of the most powerful renditions of the song.