Happy Flag Day, USA!

In the United States Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. The day commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States, which happened on that day in 1777 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress.  In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially established June 14 as Flag Day; in August 1949, National Flag Day was established by an Act of Congress.  Flag Day is not an official federal holiday, though on June 14, 1937, Pennsylvania became the first (and only) U.S. state to celebrate Flag Day as a state holiday, beginning in the town of Rennerdale.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from "Defence of Fort McHenry", a poem written in 1814 by the lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. "The Anacreontic Song" (or "To Anacreon in Heaven"), was already popular in the United States.

 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 rockets' 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?

 On the 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, half conceals, half discloses?
 Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
 In full glory reflected now shines in 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, when freemen shall stand
 Between their loved home and the war's desolation.
 Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n 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!

-