"Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place," South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela, said in a letter of congratulations to Obama.

Nov. 5, 2008 | It took America 220 years to go from George Washington, a fourth-generation Virginian, to Hawaiian-born Barack Obama, the 47-year-old son of Kenya and Kansas -- and the newly elected 44th president of the United States. In just 11 weeks, Obama will place his hand on a Bible and swear to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." No president since John Kennedy or Harry Truman will come into office facing graver crises. Such is George W. Bush's sad-eyed legacy to his successor -- from the Wall Street meltdown to an overstretched military fighting debilitating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Obama was winning 51 percent of the nation's popular vote, and had surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed for a win, according to a projection by CNN and the other major news networks at 11pm Eastern time. The results are a stunning and hard-won victory for a candidate who began the race as a relative newcomer to the national political stage, and ended it as first African-American to win the White House.

A nation that in living memory struggled violently over racial equality will have as its next president a 47-year-old, one-term U.S. senator born of a Kenyan father and Kansan mother. He is the first president elected from Chicago and the first to rise from a career in Illinois politics since Abraham Lincoln emerged from frontier obscurity to lead the nation through the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.

Barack Obama, a 47-year-old first-term senator from Illinois, shattered more than 200 years of history Tuesday night by winning election as the first African-American president of the United States.

05.00: John McCain offered a gracious concession speech as it became clear that he was not going to become the next president. As the Arizona senator spoke, Florida was declared for Barack Obama, giving the president-elect a hefty margin of victory in the electoral college with 330 votes to 155 and eight states still to be called.

"Forty-five years ago Martin Luther King had a dream of an America where men and women would be judged not on the colour of their skin but on the content of their character," Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, said. "Today what America has done is turn that dream into a reality."

Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America -- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you -- we as a people will get there," Obama said in Chicago, Illinois, before an estimated crowd of up to 240,000 people

This is a country which has habitually, sometimes irritatingly, regarded itself as young and vibrant, the envy of the world. Often this is merely hype. But there are times when it is entirely true. With Barack Obama's victory, one of these moments has arrived.