Our Star - Spangled Banner

First flags
           After the Continental Congress approved a design for our national flag, different people made flags.  Betsy Ross was one of them, but her flag, with the stars arranged in a circle, was probably not made until the 1790s.
Fifteen stripes?
           When Kentucky and Vermont joined the Union, the flag was changed to include 15 stars and stripes.  Francis Scott Key saw this flag waving on the morning after a battle at Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812.  Key was so inspired by the sight that he wrote a poem, "Defence of Fort McHenry,"  which later became our national anthem.
           Today that flag is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
A final design
            In 1818, President James Monroe signed a bill declaring that the flag would have 13 stripes to symbolize the original 13 colonies, and a star would be added for each state.  Since then, it has been changed 24 times.
The Star - Spangled Banner'
            O! say can you see by the dawn's early light,
            What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
            Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous
             flight,
            O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
            And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
            Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
            O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
            O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?