Anonymous ID: a52438 March 26, 2024, 11:27 a.m. No.20631131   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>1162 >>1186

While we're talking about the Francis Scott Key Bridge, remember who FSK was…

the poet who wrote the lyrics to our national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner.

 

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

What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight

O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket’s 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?

 

The Star-Spangled Banner, writter by Francis Scott Key about a rainy September 13, 1814.

On that day, British warships sent a downpour of shells and rockets onto Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, relentlessly pounding the American fort for 25 hours. The bombardment, known as the Battle of Baltimore, came only weeks after the British had attacked Washington, D.C., burning the Capitol, the Treasury and the President's house.

A week earlier, Francis Scott Key, a 35-year-old American lawyer, had boarded the flagship of the British fleet on the Chesapeake Bay in hopes of persuading the British to release a friend who had recently been arrested. Key's tactics were successful, but because he and his companions had gained knowledge of the impending attack on Baltimore, the British did not let them go. They allowed the Americans to return to their own vessel but continued guarding them. Under their scrutiny, Key watched on September 13 as the barrage of Fort McHenry began eight miles away.

 

From https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-story-behind-the-star-spangled-banner-149220970/