Who wrote the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner” after seeing the 1814 attack on Fort McHenry?

Francis Scott Key wrote the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner” after seeing the 1814 attack on Fort McHenry.

Key was a lawyer and amateur poet who watched the British bombardment from aboard a ship in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812. At dawn on September 14, 1814, he saw the American flag still flying over the fort and began drafting a poem.

The poem was titled “Defence of Fort M'Henry” and was soon printed in Baltimore. Its lyrics were later fitted to the melody of a popular English song, “To Anacreon in Heaven,” composed by John Stafford Smith.

Congress made “The Star-Spangled Banner” the official national anthem on March 3, 1931. The surviving flag that inspired Key is preserved by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.