The nation celebrates the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth on Thursday. President Barack Obama, who has been frequently compared to the 16th president, honors the Great Emancipator in ceremonies in Capitol Hill and in Illinois.

Congress will hold the Lincoln Bicentennial Celebration beginning 11:30 am ET. The President and lawmakers are scheduled to speak during the ceremony in the Capital rotunda.

In the evening, the 102nd Abraham Lincoln Association Annual Banquet will be held at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln served as a state legislator before becoming president. Obama is scheduled to speak at the banquet at 7:00 pm ET.

The first redesigned penny in half a century will also be put in circulation on Thursday, according to the U.S. Mint. The coin still feature the image of Lincoln in one obverse side, but will have a new design on the other side that shows four different aspects of Lincoln's life, including his early childhood in Kentucky.

The new penny will be unveiled in at 10:00 am ET at the National Park Service's Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site, in Hodgenville, KY.

Lincoln, known as the Great Emancipator for abolishing slavery, was the first Republican to be elected as president. The Bible he used during his 1861 inauguration, a 1,280-page book bound in burgundy velvet and published by the Oxford University Press, was used by Obama to take his oath of office last month.

Obama's inauguration, historic for many reasons not least was the swearing-in of the nation's first black president and the 1.5 million people gathered outside the West Front of the Capitol, commemorated Lincoln's bicentennial by having as its theme words from the the Gettysburg address, "A New Birth of Freedom."