A historic violin was played for the first time in almost 144 years this week in a special concert to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.

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The musical instrument was being played in the orchestra on the night that Lincoln was assassinated at the Ford Theatre on April 15th 1865 and had not been used since.

However, it was brought out of retirement for a special anniversary show at the famous auditorium, which was attended by president Barack Obama and his family.

Grammy Award-winning virtuoso Joshua Bell, who was in Washington to perform at the nearby Strathmore theatre, played traditional spiritual My Lord, What a Morning on the violin to open the concert.

The violin was a relatively new one by Bell's standards, as he usually performs with a 300-year-old Stradivarius, the famous Gibson ex-Huberman Stradivarius, which was partly named after its previous owner, the great Bronislaw Huberman.

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