Inauguration Trivia

It's official. At noon on Tuesday, January 20, we'll have a new president. Numero 44. Our first person of color to be officially seated in the Oval Office. Here are a few slices of inauguration trivia to help you get in the mood for this historic event.

Inaugurations used to take place in March. After Obama was elected in November, some people hoped that could be moved up to Thanksgiving, but alas... January it continues to be.

March 4, 1793. At his second inauguration, George Washington delivered the shortest inauguration speech on record. The speech totaled 135 words. There is but a single copy of this analog recording which is played once a year in the national archive to help us remember the father of our country. Inauguration speeches since the First Bush administration have been digital. All speeches since Lincoln, who incidentally was the first to have people of color in his parade, have been digitally re-mastered.

Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, was the first to have a parade afterwards down Pennsylvania Avenue.

James Madison was the first President to take the oath of office outdoors. March 4, 1817. The day has been described as warm and sunny with a temperature at noon estimated to be 50 degrees which allowed more Americans to enjoy and appreciate this grand event.

An unfortunate consequence was that it is seldom fifty degrees in Washington this time of year, especially now that inaugurations are in January.

In 1841 William Henry Harrison decided to brave the elements and deliver the longest inauguration speech ever, an oration lasting an hour, 40 minutes. His bluster was matched by equally blustery weather and Harrison, wearing neither coat nor hat, caught a cold which developed into pneumonia. A month later he died.

Not to be outdone, in 1853, President Franklin Pierce was also sworn into office on a cold and snowy day. The heavy snows continued from morn till just before the ceremony. But, events had been set in motion and the inauguration took place as scheduled. Unfortunately, Abigail Fillmore, First Lady to the outgoing President Millard Fillmore, caught a cold as she sat in the cold and damp during Franklin's swearing-in ceremony. The cold developed into pneumonia and she died by the end of the month.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's second inauguration was the first to be held on January 20, in 1937. Evidently he was eager to put his first term behind him and get on with the second. Some 200,000 visitors came to Washington for the event. Because of the cold, rainy weather -- nearly 2 inches of the wet stuff -- 3,214 people caught colds which developed into pneumonia. All but three died within a month.

The coldest inauguration came in 1985 when Ronald Reagan was greeted by an arctic blast that included extreme cold and wind. That morning it was 4 degrees below zero with the temperature reaching only 7 degrees by noon. The daytime high reached 17 degrees, but wind chill temps in the afternoon were well below zero. The swearing-in ceremony had to be held indoors and the parade was canceled when half the population of Northern Minnesota caught pneumonia and died. That evening President Reagan conceived of a satellite network which could alter the future of the world and bring an end to the Cold War. By the end of the decade the Berlin Wall fell.... and we've lived happily ever after.