A visual history of the State of the Union
Updated 1457 GMT (2257 HKT) March 7, 2024
President Joe Biden will deliver his third State of the Union address on Thursday.
It's a tradition that is rooted in the US Constitution, and there have been 98 in-person annual messages since George Washington's first in 1790.
In 1801, Thomas Jefferson sent written annual messages to the House and Senate, a precedent that lasted more than a century until President Woodrow Wilson brought back the in-person practice 1913.