This piece of sheet music bearing the words and music of "The Star Spangled Banner" will be auctioned on Dec. 3. In the 1800s, it was owned by Mary Barnitz of York County, Pa.

Oh Say Can You See …half a million dollars? A rare first edition of the sheet music for “The Star-Spangled Banner” sold for $506,500 at Christie’s Auction House in New York Friday ...

Among the world’s best-known national anthems, “The Star-Spangled Banner” (1814) emerged out of a welter ... Tavern in the Strand” according to an 18th-century copy of the sheet music, would have ...

Lester S. Levy bagged his first-edition copy of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1940 for $170, appreciably less than an anonymous buyer plunked down — $506,5000 — 70 years later on Dec. 3 at ...

It sounds like they were keeping with the tradition of parody that was the basis of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” And the melody actually comes from a British song – how did that happen?