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Key’s poem was put to the music of a British drinking song which already had many different sets of lyrics for it. Thus many people were able to sing it right away.

The Battle of Baltimore was fought on several fronts. Baltimore ship owners had sunk about 20 of their own boats blocking access to the inner harbor. Baltimorean civilians, knowing that the British had burned Washington just a few days before, had built a miles long earthworks to protect the city from the invading infantry. Happily, that land invasion never happened.

Francis Scott Key also has a connection to the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, albeit one with multiple degrees of separation.

Key's son, Philip Barton Key II, followed in his father's footsteps and also became a lawyer, becoming the District Attorney for Washington D.C. In 1858, Key began an affair with Teresa Sickles, the wife of NY Congressman Daniel Sickles. In 1859, Daniel Sickles discovered the affair and after seeing Key outside his home, chased him down and shot him adjacent to the fence at Lafayette Park in D.C.

Sickles became the first person in US to be acquitted of murder due to temporary insanity, and went on to serve as a major general during the civil war where he lost his leg at Gettysburg. Following the war, Sickles took an active interest in preserving the battlefields of the war including Gettysburg. As the National Military Cemetery at Gettysburg abutted the local cemetery, Sickles thought it appropriate to separate the two, and to do so, he procured the old fence from Lafayette Park in DC, where he had shot Key's son.