#279 - Red, White and Blue

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Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean was occasionally used as an unofficial national anthem of the United States until 1931.

1)
Some credit David T. Shaw as composer, but it is likely that Shaw initially commissioned Beckett to write the music to his lyrics, and a dispute arose when Beckett changed the lyrics. Interestingly, the lyrics were supposedly plagerized from Stephen Joseph Meany's poem Britannia, the Pride of the Ocean, written in 1842. See: http://memory.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200000004/default.html
 
 
 

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