1) Where was the first inauguration held?
a) Philadelphia
b) Boston
c) Washington
d) New York
2) Inauguration Day is Jan. 20, but that wasn't always so. On what day was the presidential inauguration held before 1937?
a) Jan. 1
b) Feb. 2
c) March 4
d) July 4
3) Which president gave the shortest inaugural address?
a) Calvin Coolidge
b) John F. Kennedy
c) Bill Clinton
d) George Washington
4) Which president's inaugurations took place in different cities?
a) Ronald Reagan
b) George Washington
c) Franklin Roosevelt
d) Grover Cleveland
5) Which poet read at John F. Kennedy's inauguration?
a) Carl Sandburg
b) Robert Frost
c) Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
d) Marianne Moore
6) Which First Lady began the tradition of an inaugural ball?
a) Dolley Madison
b) Eleanor Roosevelt
c) Rachel Jackson
d) Edith Wilson
7) Which president experienced both the warmest and the coldest inaugurations on record?
a) Franklin Roosevelt
b) Ronald Reagan
c) Dwight Eisenhower
d) Bill Clinton
8) Who is the only former president to have administered the oath of office to a president?
a) Theodore Roosevelt
b) Thomas Jefferson
c) William Taft
d) John Quincy Adams
9) Which Minnesota native administered the oath of office to four presidents?
a) Warren Burger
b) Harry Blackmun
c) Sandra Day O'Connor
d) Earl Warren
10) Whose inauguration was the first to be broadcast nationally on radio?
a) Woodrow Wilson
b) Calvin Coolidge
c) Herbert Hoover
d) Franklin Roosevelt
Match the president with the quote from his inaugural address:
• "This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper."
• "Freedom and incentives unleash the drive and entrepreneurial genius that are the core of human progress."
• "We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom."
• "Let every nation know ... that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
• "America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the Nation and gentler the face of the world."
• "Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us."
• "The mystic chords of memory ... will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
George W. Bush
George H.W. Bush
Franklin Roosevelt
Abraham Lincoln
Ronald Reagan
Theodore Roosevelt
John Kennedy
(see answers below)
Answers to Inaugural Quiz
1) d - The first inauguration, in 1789, was held in New York, the nation's capital at the time.
2) c - Inauguration Day was March 4 until changed by the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, which also moved up the inauguration date for Congress to shorten the period between Election Day and when those elected took office.
3) d - George Washington; his second inaugural address was 135 words long.
4) b - George Washington; he was inaugurated in New York in 1789 and Philadelphia in 1793
5) b - Robert Frost read at John Kennedy's inauguration. Frost wrote a poem for the occasion, titled "Dedication," but was unable to read it because of glare from the sun. Instead, he recited from memory an earlier poem of his, "The Gift Outright."
6) a - Dolley Madison was the First Lady when the first inaugural ball was held in March 1809
7) b - Ronald Reagan. It was 55 degrees when he was inaugurated in January 1981 and 7 degrees for his second inauguration in January 1985.
8) c - William Howard Taft, who was president from 1909-13, later became chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and administered the oath of office to Calvin Coolidge in 1925 and to Herbert Hoover in 1929,
9) a - Warren Burger, a St. Paul native, administered the oath of office to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1969-86.
10) b -Calvin Coolidge's inauguration in 1925 was the first broadcast nationally.
Inauguration quotes and the presidents who made them
• "This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper." - Franklin Roosevelt, during his first inauguration in 1933, against the backdrop of the Depression (before his famous line that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself").
• "Freedom and incentives unleash the drive and entrepreneurial genius that are the core of human progress." - Ronald Reagan in 1985.
• "We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom." - George W. Bush, during his second inaugural address, in 2005.
• "Let every nation know ... that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." - John F. Kennedy, in 1961
• "America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the Nation and gentler the face of the world." - George H.W. Bush, in 1989,
• "Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us." -Theodore Roosevelt, in 1905.
• "The mystic chords of memory ... will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." - Abraham Lincoln, in 1861.
Sources: U.S. Senate, Encyclopedia Brittanica, www.bartleby.com, Library of Congress
