(with apologies to Americans who know all this...)
I noticed (not long ago) that the Presidential Inauguration was to take
place on the 20th of January, which was also Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Who arranged this?
Was it a conspiracy to distract attention from D.Trump's Day of Triumph?
Or to detract from the honor due to Dr.King?
No. And it has happened before.
I had to look it up. The details are more complicated than I imagined.
The constitution originally required that the President-elect take the
oath of office within a certain number of days after election day. This
put the inauguration in early March, but by the 20th century people
began to feel that such a long "lame duck" period was unnecessary and undesirable. Since the passage of the Twentieth Amendment (1933), the
rule has been to have it on the 20th of January, unless that date falls
on a Sunday. In that case the oath is administered in a "private"
ceremony on the 20th, then the whole thing is repeated the next day with
the big crowds, fireworks, balls and the rest.
MLKJr Day was signed into law in 1983, and first observed 1986. King's
actual birthday was the 15th. Following the guidelines of the Uniform
Monday Holiday Act (1968), the day in his honor was legally established
as the third Monday in January, which means it can vary from the 15th to
the 21st. This year it's on the 20th.
If my reckoning is correct, the two days have previously converged in
1997 (20th, Clinton second inauguration) and 2013 (21st, Obama second inauguration).
Now of course bad weather has shuffled everything around...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr._Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_inauguration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Monday_Holiday_Act
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