Q 01/05

The city is named for Cecil Calvert, an English lord and founding proprietor of which colony?

A) Virginia

B) Maryland

C) Delaware

D) Carolina

Answer · why

B) Maryland

Maryland was chartered to the Calverts in 1632. Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, held a title seated in Ireland, so the city carries the family's b...

Q 02/05

The bombardment of which Baltimore stronghold in 1814 inspired 'The Star-Spangled Banner'?

A) Fort Meade

B) Fort Sumter

C) Fort McHenry

D) Fort Washington

Answer · why

C) Fort McHenry

Fort McHenry held; Francis Scott Key watched from a ship and wrote 'Defence of Fort M'Henry'; the flag now hangs in the Smithsonian.

Q 03/05

What shape is the fort that guarded the harbor in 1814?

A) A star with eight points

B) A circle

C) A square

D) A pentagon

Answer · why

D) A pentagon

It is a pentagon: Frenchman Jean Foncin designed the five-bastioned fort in 1798, ringed by a dry moat, so every wall could be covered by flanking fir...

Q 04/05

Key's poem was set to the tune of a song written for which London gentlemen's club?

A) The Hellfire Club of Dublin

B) The Kit-Cat Club

C) The Anacreontic Society

D) The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks

Answer · why

C) The Anacreontic Society

The Anacreontic Society, a London amateur-musicians' club, used John Stafford Smith's 'To Anacreon in Heaven' as its song; the melody spans 19 semiton...

Q 05/05

In what year did 'The Star-Spangled Banner' officially become the U.S. national anthem?

A) 1931

B) 1945

C) 1955

D) 1976

Answer · why

A) 1931

In 1931 President Herbert Hoover signed the joint resolution making it the national anthem, 117 years after the battle it describes.