The Star-Spangled Banner

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from "Defence of Fort M'Henry", a poem written on September 13 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Baltimore Harbor during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. "To Anacreon in Heaven" (or "The Anacreontic Song"), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. Set to Key's poem and renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner", it soon became a well-known American patriotic song. With a range of one octave and one fifth (a semitone more than an octave and a half), it is known for being difficult to sing. Although the poem has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" was recognized for official use by the United States Navy in 1889, and by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. § 301), which was signed by President Herbert Hoover.

ABC News

ABC News is the news division of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), owned by the Disney Media Networks division of the Walt Disney Company. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ABC World News Tonight; other programs include morning news-talk show Good Morning America, newsmagazine series Nightline, Primetime and 20/20, and Sunday morning political affairs program This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

History

ABC began news broadcasts early in its independent existence as a radio network after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered NBC to spin off the former NBC Blue Network into an independent company in 1943. The split (which NBC conducted voluntarily in the event that its appeal to have the ruling overturned was denied) was enforced to expand competition in radio broadcasting in the United States as the industry had only a few companies such as NBC and CBS that dominated the radio market, and in particular, was intended to prevent the limited competition from dominating news and political broadcasting and projecting narrow points-of-view. Television broadcasting was suspended however, during World War II.

Star Spangled (play)

Star Spangled is a 1936 comedic play by Robert Ardrey. It was his first play produced on Broadway and resulted in Ardrey being awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.

Story

Brooks Atkinson, writing for The New York Times, gave this description of the play:

The plot of the play revolves around the imprisoned son, who has escaped for a weekend in order to see his family, and incidentally, to kill the Polish politician who set him up eight years earlier. He plans on returning to prison before he is known to be missing.

Writing & Production

Ardrey originally conceived of the play while "pushing through snowdrifts one long hard winter on a door-to-door survey in West Side slums." He wrote that his experience of the turmoil of the Great Depression "had been anything but unique. For me, the creative consequence was the conviction that the Polish-American characters of my first play were far more amusing and meaningful than the personnel of a normal theatrical penthouse." The artistic concern with portraying folk voices would be a consistent theme throughout Ardrey's career, including in his most famous play, Thunder Rock.

National anthem

A national anthem (also state anthem, national hymn, national song etc.) is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people. The majority of national anthems are either marches or hymns in style. The countries of Latin America tend towards more operatic pieces, while a handful of countries use a simple fanfare.

Languages

Although national anthems are usually in the most common language of the country, whether de facto' or official, there are notable exceptions-

States with more than one national language may offer several versions of their anthem: for instance, Switzerland's anthem has different lyrics for each of the country's four official languages (French, German, Italian and Romansh). Canada's national anthem has different lyrics in each of the country's official languages (English and French), and on some occasions is sung with a mixture of stanzas taken from its French and English versions. The Irish national anthem was written in English; an Irish translation, although never formally adopted, is now almost always sung.

United States

Coordinates: 40°N 100°W / 40°N 100°W / 40; -100

The United States of America (USA), commonly referred to as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a federal republic composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major territories and various possessions. The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., are in central North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwestern part of North America and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. At 3.8 million square miles (9.842 million km²) and with over 320 million people, the country is the world's third or fourth-largest by total area and the third most populous. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The geography and climate of the United States are also extremely diverse, and the country is home to a wide variety of wildlife.