The Star-Spangled Filk Song

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Haggridd"
<jkusalavagemd at y...> wrote:

<< Will the Stars and Stripes--  15 of each-- still be visible after
the all night barrage? >>

One time at work someone brought up the Trivia Question "How many
stripes on the flag that The Star-Spangled Banner was written about?" 

Of course I knew that, at first, each new state joining the union got
a stripe as well as a star. (At some point I was told that the red
stripe across the bottom of our "California Republic" state flag and
the red star towards the top of it represented the star and stripe on
the US flag that the California rebels (from Mexico) hoped to quickly
become. But I don't know if new stripes were still being added by 1850).

But I couldn't out how to look up how many stripes there were in a
given year. Eventually the person who had posed the question said that
the answer was 17. 

Digresssion about trying to look things up at work, where my only
resource is as much of the Web as it not blocked by our censorware. I
use One-Look dictionary a lot, but sometimes the dictionary that has
the definition it finds for me is blocked as "Hobbies" or "Lifestyles
and Society". I mean, especially when I'm looking up railway terms,
which is kind of job related when I'm doing work for the Maintenance
of Way or Rail Fleet Services departments.