{"id":3885,"date":"2014-08-14T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T13:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/?p=3885"},"modified":"2014-07-25T14:02:07","modified_gmt":"2014-07-25T18:02:07","slug":"americas-national-anthem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/americas-national-anthem\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s national anthem"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image “The American Flag” by Shardayyy from Flickr.com<\/p><\/div>\n

The American national anthem is called the “The Star-Spangled Banner” and like most national anthems there is a story behind it.<\/p>\n

The words for this song come from a poem written during the War of 1812 in the United States. That\u2019s right, the American national anthem was not created at the same time as the country (in 1776) and it didn\u2019t officially become the national anthem until much, much later. The poem, that became America\u2019s national anthem, was called “Defense of Fort M’Henry.” It was written by a man named Francis Scott Key, after he witnessed an attack on Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.\u00a0 Eventually the poem had to be put to music if it was to become an anthem, so a popular tune from Great Britain was used as the music for this song.<\/p>\n

“The Star-Spangled Banner” was first used as an anthem by the American Navy in 1889, but didn\u2019t officially become the national anthem of the United States of America until 1931! Before 1931, other songs were used as de facto American national anthems at public events. Today, Americans only know one national anthem and it is The Star Spangled banner.\u00a0 I have written out the lyrics of this song below. Although I have included the whole song for you below, usually only the first seven lines of this song are sung as the anthem.<\/p>\n

You can also listen to this song and see the words of the anthem here:<\/p>\n