It’s a song every American has heard countless times, but how much do you really know about our national anthem?

The song became extremely popular, especially after the somewhat ho-hum original title was changed to The Star Spangled Banner ... misinterpretation of the lyrics. There’s a lot of argument ...

"Was," because this object at hand, the original Star-Spangled Banner, is no longer "still there." The effects of age brought it down — something the British failed to do 186 years ago.

Let’s take a line-by-line tour of the history and meaning behind the lyrics. Like so many famous songs of yore, "The Star-Spangled Banner" started as a poem, called “The Defence of Fort ...