LAHORE: The first-ever American president inaugurated on January 20 was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, some 88 years ago in 1937.
Before that, US presidential inaugurations mostly used to take place in March.
However, the first-ever US presidential inauguration took place on April 30, 1789, instead of the earlier announced date of March 4, 1789. Actually, the Congress was unable to count the electoral ballots that quickly, so General George Washington had to wait.
Washington suffered from an early tooth decay and had lost all but one of his teeth by the time he was inaugurated. His dentures were made up of ivory, brass, lead, gold etc.
Many historians believe that one American president, William Henry Harrison, had caught cold on his inauguration day, which ultimately led to his death just 32 days later, the shortest tenure for any US head of state.
On March 4, 1841, a cold and wet day, Harrison braved the chill and chose not to wear an overcoat, gloves or a hat, rode on horseback to the ceremony, and then delivered the longest inaugural address in American history (8445 words in 105 minutes).
He then rode through the streets, stood in a three-hour receiving line at the White House, and attended three inaugural balls that evening.
The “Los Angeles Times” writes: “Harrison caught cold and died a month later of pneumonia after spending five hours in bone-chilling wind and rain at his inauguration in 1841.”
However, other accounts suggest that he developed pneumonia three weeks later.
According to the “Washington Post,” President Major General Harrison went on his daily sunrise walk on March 26 to the local food markets without wearing a coat or hat. He got caught in a sudden rainstorm, but didn’t change his wet clothes when he got back to the White House, where his condition worsened and he perished after nine days.
While there have been several presidents who were inaugurated in locations other than Washington, DC (e.g. in a private residence, in a farmhouse or on an airplane), George Washington is the only President to have taken oath in two capital cities.
Washington took his first oath in New York on April 30, 1789, while his second inauguration took place on March 4, 1793 in Philadelphia, which was the nation’s capital then.
In 1801, Thomas Jefferson decided to walk to his inauguration to demonstrate simplicity. Without wearing any distinctive badge of office, which was in contrast to the pomp and grandeur displayed by his predecessors (Washington and Adams), Jefferson stayed at a boarding house.
His predecessor, John Adams, skipped the ceremony due to rivalry.
Adams and Jefferson eventually reconciled, and during the last 15 years of their lives, the two ex-presidents exchanged over 150 letters. They died within hours of each other on the same day–July 4, 1826.
Some 28 years after his father had skipped Jefferson’s inauguration, history repeated itself when John Quincy Adams opted to boycott Andrew Jackson’s swearing-in on March 4, 1829.
In 1849, President Zachery Taylor refused to take oath on a Sunday. The Presidency could not be vacant for a day, so Senator David Atchison was brought in as a substitute for a day.
Some argue that this made Atchison the 12th president and Taylor the 13th, but it did not count.
The inscription on Atchison’s gravestone humorously states, “President of the United States for One Day.”
On March 4, 1873, Ulysses Grant’s second inauguration was so cold that the food and champagne froze, and so did the hundreds of caged canaries (songbirds) that were brought in for the reception!
For his second inauguration in 1905, Theodore Roosevelt, wore the ring of Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated in 1865.
When President Warren Harding died in office, his Vice President Calvin Coolidge was at his family’s Vermont farmhouse, which had no electricity or telephone. He received word of Harding’s death by courier.
On August 3, 1923, Coolidge was sworn-in by his father, who was a notary public. The entire ceremony was conducted by kerosene lamp and the new president reportedly went back to bed afterwards. In 1925, for his second inauguration, Coolidge was sworn-in by US Supreme Court Chief Justice, William Howard Taft, who also went to become America’s president.
Following the assassination of President Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson took oath on November 22, 1963, aboard the Air Force One. Judge Sarah Hughes administered the oath and she became the first woman to inaugurate a president. Ronald Reagan’s first swearing-in ceremony, on January 20, 1981, holds the record for the warmest Inauguration Day (13 Degrees Celsius at noon in Washington, DC). His second, on January 21, 1985, registered as the chilliest Inauguration Day (Minus 4 Degrees Celsius).
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