May a  Canadian offer the suggestion that the composer of the Star Bangeled
Banner, the national anthem of the USA, our best friend in the world, was
Francis Scott Keyes.

Alex Renwick,
Ottawa, Canada

 [Oh jeez, like I have time for this.:-)  Any decent encyclopedia will
 have the facts.  The name is Francis Scott Key (1780-1843).  He did not
 compose our national anthem (as far as I know he had no musical training
 at all), he simply wrote a poem about a battle.  Here's the story of the
 flag, the poem, and the anthem as they are inextricably intertwined.

 Guarding the entrance to Baltimore harbor during the War of 1812, Fort
 McHenry faced almost certain attack by British forces.  Major George
 Armistead, the stronghold's commander, was ready to defend the fort, but
 he wanted a flag that would identify his position, and one whose size
 would be visible to the enemy from a distance.  Determined to supply
 such a flag, a committee of high-ranking officers called on Mary Young
 Pickersgill, a Baltimore widow who had had experience making ship flags,
 and explained that they wanted a United States flag that measured 30 feet
 by 42 feet.  She agreed to the job.

 With the help of her 13-year-old daughter, Caroline, Mrs. Pickersgill
 spent several weeks measuring, cutting, and sewing the 15 stars and
 stripes.  Once completed, the flag was delivered to the committee, and
 Mrs. Pickersgill was paid $405.90.  In August 1813, it was presented to
 Major Armistead, but, as things turned out, more than a year would pass
 before hostile forces threatened Baltimore.

 After capturing Washington, D.C., and burning some of its public buildings
 including the White House and Capitol building, the British headed for
 Baltimore.  On the morning of September 13, 1814, British bomb ships began
 hurling high-trajectory shells toward Fort McHenry from positions beyond
 the reach of the fort's guns.  The bombardment continued throughout the
 rainy night.

 Anxiously awaiting news of the battle's outcome was a Washington, D.C.,
 lawyer named Francis Scott Key.  Key had visited the enemy's fleet to
 secure the release of a Maryland doctor, who had been abducted by the
 British after they left Washington.  The lawyer had been successful in
 his mission, but he could not escort the doctor home until the attack
 ended.  So he waited on a flag-of-truce sloop anchored eight miles
 downstream from Fort McHenry.

 During the night, there had been only occasional sounds of the fort's guns
 returning fire.  At dawn, the British bombardment tapered off.  Had the
 fort been captured? Placing a telescope to his eye, Key trained it on the
 fort's flagpole.  There he saw the large garrison flag catch the morning
 breeze.  It had been raised as a gesture of defiance, replacing the wet
 storm flag that had flown through the night.

 Thrilled by the sight of the flag still flying and the knowledge that
 the fort had not fallen, Key took a letter from his pocket, and began to
 write some verses on the back of it.  Later, after the British fleet had
 withdrawn, Key checked into a Baltimore hotel, and completed his poem on
 the defense of Fort McHenry.  He then sent it to a printer for duplication
 on handbills under the title "Defence of Fort McHenry".  It was printed in
 a newspaper for the first time in the Baltimore Patriot on September 20th,
 1814, then in papers as far away as Georgia and New Hampshire.  To the
 verses was added a note "Tune: Anacreon in Heaven," an old English
 drinking song.  In October a Baltimore actor sang Key's new song in a
 public performance and called it "The Star-Spangled Banner".  117 Years
 later, it was adopted as the national anthem of the U.S.A.  The original
 Star-Spangled Banner still exists and hangs in the Smithsonian
 Institution's Museum of American History in Washington, DC.  -Dave]