USA/MD: Fort McHenry National Monument
Fort McHenry is a massive pentagonal fort in the Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore in Maryland. Built in 1798, it is most famous for repelling the British attack in 1812-14. It was here that the large flag of the United States, with 15 stars and 15 stripes (one for each of the 15 states in the union at the time) was raised. It’s after seeing this flag fly over Fort McHenryn in 1814, that the American poet Francis Scott Key wrote a poem “Defense of Fort McHenry”, mentioning the “star-spangled banner”. The poem was combined with a popular military tune at the time “Anacreon in Heaven”. More then 100 years later, on 1931, the poem and the tune became the national anthem of the USA. Interestingly, in 1925, Fort McHenry was designated a national park, but then reduced in status to a national monument in 1931, the only such re-designation to ever happen.
