On this day in 1776, America’s Second Continental Congress unanimously voted to ratify the Declaration of Independence. As such, today America celebrates its independence and it is a national holiday in the States.

I’ll spare everyone the long story that is the American Revolution this year, and instead opt for a reading the poem “The Star Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key. 

The poem was set to music in the year 1814. The tune was a popular melody called “The Anacreontic Song” by John Stafford Smith of England. But it was Francis Scott Key’s brother-in-law, a judge by the name of Joseph H. Nicholson, who thought the lyrics perfectly fit the existing melody, and first published the tune and lyrics together. 

The song spread through the country over the next 100 years. It wasn’t officially the National Anthem until President Hoover signed it into law on March 4th, 1931. 

Luckily, for sports fans everywhere, only the first verse is sung as the American National Anthem. 

 

Francis Scott Key

 

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 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?

 

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, now conceals, now discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines on 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 and 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 homes and the war's desolation!

Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land,

Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, for 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.