Home of the Brave

The line closes every verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner": the land of the free and the home of the brave. Francis Scott Key, an American lawyer, wrote the poem on September 14, 1814, after watching the British bombard Fort McHenry for twenty-five hours from a truce ship in the Patapsco River, where the British fleet had held him.

What he saw at dawn was a flag still flying. The garrison flag at Fort McHenry measured 30 by 42 feet and had fifteen stars and fifteen stripes; Mary Pickersgill and her workers had sewn it in her house on Pratt Street in Baltimore. Key's poem was set to a popular tune and sung for more than a century before Congress made it the national anthem on March 3, 1931.

The picture takes the phrase at full throttle. An eagle in a star-spangled jacket rides a motorcycle with stars on its tank, a large flag streaming behind his head. Fighter jets trail orange contrails overhead alongside a flight of eagles, a wall of flame and fireworks stands behind, and two muscle cars, one coral-red and one dark blue, roar in at the edges under small flags on poles.