We finally got a larger flag pole mounted to the house to display a U.S. flag. Tracy had bought a mountable pole soon after we got to Colorado Springs (5 years ago) but we'd never put it up - till today. What motivated Papa was his new 15-star flag from Fort McHenry...
It's the "Star-Spangled Banner," the 15-star flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. It's the flag Francis Scott Key saw the morning after the attack on Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 that inspired him to write our national anthem. There were actually 18 states at the time, but the making of a new flag to account for new states had not yet happened. In addition to 15 stars, there were 15 stripes. At one point they planned for one stripe for each state as well as one star but gave that up soon after this flag and went back to 13 stripes as it is today. It can also be recognized by a red stripe bordering the blue field at the bottom; on today's flag, a white stripe borders the bottom of the blue. It's "spangled" because the stars are all mixed in their orientations (they're all oriented the same way on subsequent flags). We visited Fort McHenry on our recent trip to Baltimore and saw the actual Star-Spangled Banner from Fort McHenry at the Smithsonian's American History Museum on the Mall in DC.
All of our Fort McHenry photos start
here.
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| Fort McHenry from a water taxi. |
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| A replica we unfurled at the fort. |
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| Proudly flying next to Matt's office window. |
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