Oops! Ticketmaster sold off the limited number of public tickets to the Inaugural Ball before they were supposed to go on sale.

If you'd signed up for info on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's website, you would have gotten a notice saying the tickets would be available this morning (Monday). But Ticketmaster jumped the gun, mistakenly sending out an E-mail last night. And those hard-to-get tickets were scooped up by people who happened to check their inboxes.

Ticketmaster has apologized to customers, saying, "During testing of our E-mail system tonight, you may have inadvertently received an invitation to purchase tickets for 2013 Inauguration events, including the Inaugural Ball or the Inaugural Parade. Public tickets to these events were originally scheduled to go on sale tomorrow morning -- you received the E-mail tonight in error, and Ticketmaster takes responsibility for this mistak