In the early hours of September 4, 1814, a fierce storm came up further obscuring the drama that was being played out in Baltimore’s harbor. Francis Scott Key strained to see the Stars and Stripes over Fort McHenry. Then, at the first light of dawn, he saw her and wrote the words that have stirred our hearts ever since:
O say, can you see,
By the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed
At the twight’s last gleaming…