The bizarre history of US presidential inaugurations
Updated
On Friday, Washington time, on the west stairs of the Capitol Building, Donald John Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States.
The inauguration ceremony is expected to take several hours, and will include speeches, musical performances and a parade right afterwards.
The Constitution of the United States lays out very few rules for what has to happen for the transferral of power to occur.
According to the Constitution, the new President just has to say these words:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
The President doesn't actually have to say "so help me God", but most of them do.
You'd think it was a pretty simple affair — but in 2009, Chief Justice John Roberts and the incoming President, Barack Obama, messed it up and had to do it again the next day.
But that's all the rules say. In order to become the President, you just have to say those 35 words. It doesn't matter where you say them, or even who you say them to.
Getting by with a little help from your friends
After the assassination of John F Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson was inaugurated on board Air Force One in Dallas by a friend, Federal Judge Sarah T Hughes, the only woman to swear in a President.
President Calvin Coolidge was famously inaugurated in the parlour of his parents' house by the light of a kerosene lamp just before 3:00am.
Coolidge was Vice President to Warren G Harding, who died of pneumonia in San Francisco.
When word reached Coolidge that he had become the 30th President of the United States, he asked his dad to administer the oath.
But inaugurations by kerosene lamp are the exception rather than the rule. Most inaugurations take place outside, in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere winter.
Can inaugurations be deadly?
In 1841, 68-year-old William Henry Harrison elected not to wear an overcoat, hat or gloves for the ceremony, which was held outside in a snowstorm.
Harrison then delivered the longest-ever inaugural address — a very boring 8,500 word speech which would have taken around an hour and 45 minutes to deliver (for reference, no inaugural address has been longer than 3,000 words since Herbert Hoover in 1929).
Harrison was outside so long he caught a cold. He couldn't shake the cold, it turned into pneumonia and he died 31 days into his presidency.
Though the link between Harrison's inaugural address and his death has been called into question more recently, it's certainly a good story.
The hunt for celebrity performers
It's no secret that Donald Trump has been struggling to find musical acts to perform at his inauguration. He's received public rejections from Charlotte Church, Andrea Bocelli, Paul Anka, KISS, Elton John and Celine Dion.
He's even been turned down by a Bruce Springsteen cover band and Moby, who said he would only perform if Trump released his tax returns.
An America's Got Talent runner-up, Jackie Evancho, will sing the National Anthem at the event itself, and there will also be a performance from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. One member of the Choir has resigned rather than perform at the inauguration.
What kind of crowds can Trump expect?
The area put aside for ticketed crowds is about the size of the MCG, the SCG and the Gabba if they all sat next to each other.
Behind that area, the National Mall leaves space for hundreds of thousands more people.
At Barack Obama's first inauguration, where the crowd has been estimated at over 1 million, tens of thousands of people watched from the Washington Monument, more than two kilometres from the new President.
There are six security screening points for everyone within 600 meters of the new President.
At last count, over 50 House Democrats are intending to boycott the inauguration, the biggest boycott since Richard Nixon's second inauguration in 1973.
So how many people is Trump expecting? It's unclear, but he is advertising on Facebook.
Topics: government-and-politics, world-politics, us-elections, history, united-states
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