Short answers, pulled from the story.
Julia Ward Howe wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic in November 1861 and sold it for four dollars to The Atlantic Monthly, where it was first published in February 1862. Howe was an abolitionist writer and active anti-slavery campaigner.
Howe adapted her lyrics from the soldiers' song "John Brown's Body", which itself derived from a folk hymn called "Say, Brothers will you Meet Us", also known as "Glory Hallelujah". The Tiger Battalion of the Massachusetts militia collectively created "John Brown's Body" during the early Civil War period.
Martin Luther King Jr. incorporated the song's lyrics into multiple major speeches, including "How Long, Not Long" delivered on the 25th of March, 1965, after the Selma to Montgomery march. His final sermon "I've Been to the Mountaintop", delivered in Memphis on the 3rd of April, 1968, the night before his assassination, ended with the song's opening line.
The chanting tradition at Tottenham Hotspur began in September 1961 during the 1961-62 European Cup, when fans wore angel costumes and sang "Glory, glory, hallelujah" as Spurs beat Polish side Gornik Zabrze 8-1. It later spread to Hibernian, Leeds United, and Manchester United, and all four clubs released official recordings of their versions.
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir won the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus in 1960 for their recording. The single, arranged and edited by Columbia Records and disc jockey Bill Randle, reached number 13 on Billboard's Hot 100 and is the choir's only Top 40 hit on that chart.
John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath took its title from the song's first verse, as suggested by his wife Carol Steinbeck. John Updike drew the title In the Beauty of the Lilies from the same source, and Bruce Catton named two volumes of his Centennial History of the Civil War after the song: Terrible Swift Sword and Never Call Retreat.