Despite rain clouds and drizzle, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden hosted the first White House Easter Egg Roll since before the coronavirus pandemic on Monday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his daughter were among the 30,000 children and adults to join the traditional event.
Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon, singer Ciara and actress-singer Kristin Chenoweth added a dash of star power to the event that dates to 1878.
“My job is to keep it from raining for another two minutes,” Fallon said in opening remarks on the South Lawn.
The theme for the day was “egg-ucation.” The first lady, a community college professor, turned the South Lawn into a school community with a variety of educational stations.
“The determined spirit of education is what we wanted to honour in this Easter Egg Roll,” Mrs Biden said.
The coronavirus pandemic forced the White House to cancel the Easter Egg Roll in 2020 and 2021. But the event is back as the number of coronavirus cases, hospital emergencies and deaths has eased.
“This year we’re finally getting together again, and it’s so special,” Mr Biden said.
More than two dozen costumed characters were on hand, including Dr Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, the Racing Presidents mascots for the Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball, Rosita and Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, and Snoopy and Charlie Brown, among others.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
