In a defining moment in US history, Barack Hussein Obama was today sworn in as the first black President in a country hungry for change after George W Bush's divisive wars in two distant lands and the economic troubles that shook the country and the rest of the world.
Climaxing the unlikeliest of journeys to the White House, the 47-year-old African-American who has raised unprecedented expectations worldwide was administered the oath of office as the 44th president by Chief Justice John G Roberts Jr on a chilly morning at 12:06 AM (2236 IST), 12 minutes behind schedule, on the steps of the West Front of the Capitol Hill where the US Congress sits.
Significantly before Obama, a president had never been sworn in by a chief justice he voted against. Indian Ambassador to the US Ronen Sen was among those present at the costliest inaugurals estimated to have cost $170 mn.
Braving icy temperatures, an estimated two million people from all over the country and some from outside thronged Washington to watch the charismatic Democrat's tryst with history and roared in approval after he took oath, nearly 11 weeks after winning the November4 Presidential elections defeating the Republican candidate John McCain.
Shattering racial barriers as the first Afro-American head of America, Obama, the son of a black Kenyan and white mother from Kansas, took his oath placing hands on the same Bible used at the 1861 inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, whose Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery.
Obama, a gifted and inspirational speaker whose ascendancy to the top office electrified the world, takes over a nation gripped by uncertainty after Bush's eight divisive years in the White House, an era that witnessed the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the beginning of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and an economic collapse not seen since the 1930s Great Depression.
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Miles of black iron security fencing were laid out along the parade route and much of the National Mall stretching from Capitol Hill, built by slave labour, to the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King, Jr. Spoke in 1963 of a dream of racial unity in the memorable " I have a dream...Speech".
More than 10,000 people from all 50 states including bands and military units follow Obama and Biden from the Capitol along the 2.4-km inaugural parade route down Pennsylvania Avenue., concluding at a bullet-proof reviewing stand in front of the White House.
One official who will miss out on the celebrations is US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who remained at an undisclosed location as the "designated successor" in the event of a catastrophe.
The inauguration day began early for Obama and his wife Michelle. Together with Biden and his family, they attended a church service at St John's Epsicopal Church.
This was followed by coffee at the White House with outgoing president George W Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. The group then travelled to the Capitol Hill along a packed route.
Marching bands, military veterans, union workers and schoolchildren were to then join a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House for Obama to take up the reins of power in the Oval Office and his place in history.