Fort McHenry inspired Francis Scott Key to write the lyrics that became the U.S. national anthem.
During the War of 1812, British forces attacked Baltimore in September 1814. Key watched the bombardment from a ship in the harbor and saw that the American flag was still flying over Fort McHenry the next morning. He wrote a poem titled “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” which described the sight and the emotional relief of seeing the fort had held.
The poem was soon set to the music of “To Anacreon in Heaven,” an older English song associated with the Anacreontic Society. The combined song became known as “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Congress officially designated it the national anthem in 1931.
Fort McHenry was designed as a coastal defense fort and remains a national historic shrine in Baltimore, Maryland. A common misunderstanding is that Key wrote the anthem’s music; he wrote the words, while the melody was adapted from the pre-existing tune. The flag he saw had 15 stars and 15 stripes.