Bells tolled, wreaths were laid, speeches intoned and banjos picked to mark the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth in a Kentucky log cabin. At the Lincoln presidential museum in Springfield, hundreds of excited schoolchildren joined in reciting the 16th president's Gettysburg Address — an attempt to break the record for the biggest worldwide crowd reading it aloud together.

"I got up at 4:30 this morning to be here!" said Emma Bradford, a 9-year-old fourth-grader from the Chicago suburb of Barrington."Abraham Lincoln is my idol."