Happy Independence Day weekend!

"The first stanza (O Say Can You See...) makes the flag musical," the painter Peter Halley says of his vision for this flowing photomontage. "In a way the stars and stripes get equated with streaming and bursting." (Peter Halley) Read more about artistic interpretations of the Star-Spangled Banner in Smithsonian magazine.

Cohan gave his regards to Broadway

It is the birthday of Broadway's original song-and-dance man, George M. Cohan, who is considered the father of the American musical comedy. He wrote dozens of shows, produced and performed in them as well. He published more than 300 songs, including enduring favorite such as "You're a Grand Old Flag," "Over There," "Give My Regards to Broadway," and "The Yankee Doodle Boy." Though he always claimed to have been born on the Fourth of July, his actual birthday was July 3.

Hermann Hesse: Counterculture favorite

It is the birthday of German writer Hermann Hesse (1877), who is best remembered for his novels Siddhartha (1922) and Steppenwolf (1927), which, through the influence of Timothy Leary and Colin Wilson, became favorite literature of the counterculture in the 1960s. Siddhartha is about a young man’s pursuit of enlightenment in India. Steppenwolf tells the story of a young man who feels that he is an outsider in society, and wrestles with his dual nature as both a low, animalistic man and a spiritual one. Hesse won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.

Happy birthday, Indiana Jones

It is the birthday of fictional hero Indiana Jones (1899), a professor of archaeology whose globe-trotting exploits to retrieve priceless artifacts bring him into conflict with Nazis, bloodthirsty cultists, and Soviets. The character created by filmmaker George Lucas (and fleshed out with his friend Steven Spielberg) was inspired by the pulp magazine and movie heroes of the 1930s, such as surgeon-scientist-explorer Doc Savage, as well as treasure hunter Allan Quatermain of the novel King Solomon’s Mines (1885) by H. Rider Haggard. Henry Jones, Jr., first appeared in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and subsequently in three other films (all portrayed by Harrison Ford), as well as television series, video games, and novels. Theme park attractions also feature the character.