As Donald Trump prepares for take his oath of office, we look back at the wildest, booziest and most violent inaugurations in history
DONALD Trump will become the 45th President of the United States on Friday when he will be sworn in on the steps of the US Capitol.
The Republican nominee achieved one of the most improbable political victories in modern US history – despite a series of controversies that would easily have destroyed other candidacies.
But despite being just days away from becoming one of the most powerful men in the world, Trump is having trouble securing singers for his inauguration and has a record low approval rating - just 40 per cent.
The billionaire business has been left with thin-pickings after a number of high-profile snubs from the likes of Elton John and Celine Dion - and protesters from a wide range of organisations are expected to show their rage in Washington.
But even with these looming problems, his inauguration will probably go smoother than some previous presidents.
Booze-fuelled mayhem at Andrew Jackson's White House
On March 4, 1829, Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, threw open the doors of the White House to his supporters after the ceremony.
What followed was a drunken party of an epic scale that forced the new Commander-in-Chief to escape via a side door (some say it was a window).
By some estimates 10,000 or so people thundered in and began eating and drinking. Biographer Jon Meacham called it a "legendary scene in American history that has forever linked Jackson with the image of a crowd trashing the White House".
Amazingly, there were no police officers to handle the crowd so fights broke out and furniture, crockery and fittings were trampled, broken and ruined.
It got so bad that it was said his supporters had to be lured outside to the White House lawn with bowls of whiskey punch and ice cream.
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Woodrow Wilson has thunder stolen in 1913
Woodrow Wilson was met with silence when he pulled into Washington’s Union Station the day before his inauguration in March 1913.
He asked a police officer: "Where are all the people?"
"Watching the suffrage parade," the officer replied.
An estimated 5,000-8,000 women (an incredible amount for the time) demanding the vote took part in a parade featuring nine bands, four mounted brigades, and 20 floats.
Their activism worked eventually worked on Wilson, who had traditionally opposed suffrage for women, and they won the vote soon after World War One.
Tension between FDR and Herbert Hoover
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt travelled with his vanquished opponent Henry Hoover in a motorcade after his 1932 landslide victory, it was reportedly an awkward affair.
Inaugural historian Jim Bendat told Vice: "Hoover apparently ignored his successor's attempts at conversations and didn't even look at him the entire time. Hoover looks straight ahead in every picture."
However, Roosevelt, against a backdrop of mass unemployment and suffering caused by the Great Depression, went on to give his spine-tingling 'the only thing we have to fear is... fear itself' speech.
First lady woes
First Lady Rosalynn Carter's was reportedly very frosty to incoming First Lady Nancy Reagan in 1980.
In Bendat's book Democracy's Big Day: The Inauguration of Our President, he quotes Reagan as saying: "Rosalynn just looked at the window, and didn't say a word. I didn't know what to say, so I kept quiet, too.
"Fortunately, it's a short ride."
Demonstrations for Dubya
In 2001 George W. Bush was met with an estimated 20,000 protesters furious at the vote recount debacle, bearing signs saying, 'Hail to the Thief' and 'Selected, not elected'. One threw an egg at his limo.
It wasn't all bad though, he got to dance with Ricky Martin at the Lincoln Memorial.
After his re-election in 2005, anti-war protesters tried to disrupt the ceremony.
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