10 Surprising National Anthem Facts You’ve Never Heard Before

You may not be able to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” by heart, but you’ve likely heard it dozens of times. What you probably haven’t heard before is its dramatic origin story or other fascinating national anthem facts.

On Sept. 13, 1814, Francis Scott Key watched the brutal overnight assault on Fort McHenry—and an American flag still flying at dawn. That moment inspired a poem that became our national anthem. Read on to explore unheard national anthem facts and the powerful story behind its creation.

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It’s set to the tune of an old English drinking song

Ironically, the melody of “The Star-Spangled Banner” has English roots. The anthem was originally set to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heav’n,” an 18th-century drinking song from a London men’s club known as the Anacreontic Society.

Before becoming the national anthem, it was a popular American drinking song

Back in the days before national media, one of the best ways for a politico to reach the common man was through catchy tunes sung at bars and parties. So while the second president, John Adams, was campaigning for reelection against Thomas Jefferson in 1800, he borrowed the old Anacreon tune for a propaganda poem called “Adams and Liberty.” The poem warned against mercantilism and foreign involvement, spearing Jefferson’s notorious pro-French sympathies.

Jefferson’s camp countered with “Jefferson and Liberty,” a 15-verse defense of free speech and religion sung to an Irish jig. Jefferson won the election, but Adams’ song may have single-handedly turned a British tune into an American earworm.

The lyrics come from a poem

Francis Scott Key penned the words of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Baltimore on Sept. 14, 1814. But these lyrics were originally intended as a poem called “Defense of Fort McHenry,” which he wrote after witnessing an American flag raised triumphantly above a Baltimore stronghold the morning after a 27-hour British bombardment. As the poem says, after more than a day of fighting, “our flag was still there.”

Key’s brother-in-law first made the connection between the poem’s words and the Anacreon tune a few days later, printing it with sheet music in The Baltimore Patriot on Sept. 20.

The original sheet music contains an infamous spelling mistake

There are only about a dozen copies left of the original 1814 sheet music imprint of Key’s “The Star-Spangled Banner.” You won’t have trouble identifying the original edition: Like the Lincoln Memorial, it has a typo. The misprint “A Pariotic Song” appears in its subtitle.

There is more than one stanza

Anyone who’s ever attended a sporting event is familiar with the first stanza of the national anthem. It’s certainly the most well-known part of the song, but get this: There are three more stanzas after that, each ending with the line, “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

We typically don’t sing past the first stanza because the following three contain even more challenging phrases, such as “foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes” and “fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses.”

The real Star-Spangled Banner has a sibling

In 1813, a woman named Mary Pickersgill, a Baltimore flag maker, was asked to make two flags for Fort McHenry. One of these, the 30-by-42-foot U.S. Army flag, would later become the Star-Spangled Banner. Its sibling, a smaller storm flag, measured 17 by 25 feet and was designed to withstand even the toughest of weather, saving wear and tear on the larger flag.

The song sounds different than it did 200 years ago

Key himself wouldn’t recognize today’s version of the national anthem. The song was originally intended for a group of people to sing together. Today, “The Star-Spangled Banner” has become a soloist affair, and the general tempo is often much slower.

The song is difficult for even a trained singer

Many superstar vocalists struggle to sing our national anthem. The lyrics alone are a challenge—just ask Christina Aguilera, who forgot the words at Super Bowl XLV, or Michael Bolton, who wrote them on his hand.

And only the most talented vocalists can hit those notes. “It has a lot to do with the range … Basically, the notes are very high,” Kenneth Slowik, director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society, told the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Particularly throat-straining: singing the highest note of the piece on the e at the end of the word free. Don’t believe it? Try it.

Our national anthem exists because of a cartoon

America didn’t have a national anthem until 1931—and it could have taken longer if not for a cartoon. In 1929, Robert Ripley published an item in his syndicated “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” cartoon pointing out the fact that America did not have a national anthem. After Ripley received many letters of backlash, he told these upset patriots that their efforts would be better spent writing their congressmen. This led to a 5-million-signature petition asking Congress for a national anthem.

It worked. In 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed a law making “The Star-Spangled Banner” the official national anthem of the United States of America.

The actual Star-Spangled Banner was hidden away during WWII

In 1907, the famous flag that flew over Fort McHenry was first loaned to the Smithsonian Institution by New York stockbroker Eben Appleton (the grandson of the Army major who defended Fort McHenry), who had inherited it after his mother’s death. Appleton had received numerous requests to display the flag for patriotic events but ultimately chose the Smithsonian as its home.

In 1912, he converted the loan into a permanent gift, and by 1914, the flag had officially become part of the museum’s collection. It’s been there ever since, though it did leave the museum at the start of World War II. With the threat of an attack on U.S. soil, the museum moved the flag to Luray, Virginia, along with other national treasures.

Today, the war-weary flag that inspired our anthem is on permanent exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

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Sources:

• Smithsonian National Museum of American History: “The Lyrics”
• Library of Congress: “The story behind the song”
• Smithsonian National Museum of American History: “7 things you didn’t know about the Star-Spangled Banner”
• Smithsonian Institution Archives: “Star-Spangled Banner Loaned to USNM”