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Early
1795

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By 1794, Vermont and Kentucky had joined the Union, so Congress authorized a change to the flag, adding two more stars and two more stripes. This fifteen-star, fifteen-stripe version of the flag was the one that Francis Scott Key saw when he wrote that "the flag was still there."

Eventually, Congress realized that they couldn't keep adding a stripe to the flag every time a new state joined the Union (could you imagine the flag with 50 stripes?). In 1818, they redesigned the flag, bringing the number of stripes down to thirteen (to honor the thirteen original colonies) and adding a new star for every new state. .

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Fun Fact
The name "Old Glory" was coined by Captain Stephen Driver, a Salem, Massachusetts shipmaster, in 1831. The term "Old Glory" is now often used as a generic term applied to the American flag, not the Star-Spangled Banner flag.

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