Today in 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed a bill that made “The Star-Spangled Banner” the national anthem of the United States.
Francis Scott Key wrote the words in 1814, after witnessing an actual star-spangled banner waving after the bombardment of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
Not everybody knows that the anthem was over a century old before the US put a ring on it, so to speak.
Here’s another bit of anthem-ology that might be new to you: there’s an official Spanish-language version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
There have been several Spanish version of the song over the years; in the late 1800s and early 1900s, people wrote several translations, mostly so that Spanish-speaking immigrants could access the song.
But these versions weren’t really singable to the same tune as the original version; they were just meant to get the meaning of the song across to Spanish-speakers;
In the 1940s, President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration was trying to build stronger ties to Latin American countries through what it called the Good Neighbor Policy.
This initiative included a lot of cultural exchanges, and the administration thought it would be useful to have a singable version of the national anthem in Spanish, sharing our values through song.
The State Department offered a $150 commission to someone who could not only translate the words but keep the rhyme and meter of the original English version.
Which was the real challenge, because Spanish words can be very different from their counterpart words in English.
The winner of the commission was Clotilde Arias, a native of Peru who came to the US during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and became an American citizen in 1942.
This was her kind of job: Arias was a songwriter who composed lots of jingles for big US companies that were advertising in Spanish-language markets.
Her version is called “El Pendón Estrellado”; “Pendón” means “banner” and “Estrellado” means “Starry,” so it translates to “The Starry Banner.”
The original papers from Arias’ Spanish-language national anthem are in the collection of the Smithsonian, which also organized performances of the song (possibly the first public performances) in Washington DC in 2012.
Today in 1920, the birthday of James Doohan, who played Mr. Scott on “Star Trek.”
That character also has a birthdate – June 28th, 2222 – and the community of Linlithgow, Scotland has a plaque marking this future historical site.
Not Lost in Translation: The Life of Clotilde Arias (National Museum of American History)