Key writes a song, September 14, 1814

Today in 1814, Francis Scott Key saw the sun rise aboard a British warship. Key was an American, a lawyer by trade and a former militiaman out of necessity. He was in a dangerous place at a dangerous time, for the ship on which he was temporarily trapped was part of the flotilla that had spent the evening shelling Fort McHenry, the fort that helped protect Baltimore from a seaborne invasion. But as the sun rose, Key viewed something that he would carry with him for the rest of his life: the huge American flag flying over McHenry, though a little tattered, was still flying. The fort had held against 1,800 British cannonballs. Key was so moved by what he saw that he immediately wrote a poem to commemorate the event. As he said later, "Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?"