For this years Flag Day, I chose to help celebrate the Star Spangled Banner’s 200 years!  As national treasures go, it was a bargain: $405.90 was paid to Mary Pickersgill of Baltimore, who fashioned it from red, blue and undyed wool, plus cotton for the 15 stars to fly at the fortress guarding the city’s harbor.

A collage of 2 women, 1914, at the Smithsonian working to restore the Star-Spangled Banner in a room with a model of a giant squid; by Terry Winters.

An enormous flag, 30 by 42 feet, it was intended as a bold statement to the British warships that were certain to come.  And, when in September 1814, the young United States turned back the invaders in a spectacular battle witnessed by Francis Scott Key, he put his joy into a verse published first as “Defense of Fort M’Henry,” and then, set to the tune of…