BASIC
INFORMATION
Full
Name: United States of America
Capital
Washington, D.C.
Largest city New
York City
Official language
English
Government
Federal Republic
Area 9,631,420
km²
Population
299,102,661
Currency United
States dollar (USD)
Time
zone (UTC-5 to -10)
Internet
TLD .us
Calling
code +1
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GEOGRAPHY
& BACKGROUND
The
United States of America, also known as
the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A.,
the U.S. of A., the States, and America,
is a country in North America. A federal
republic, the United States shares land
borders with Canada and Mexico, and extends
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
Its capital is Washington, D.C.
The
present-day continental United States has
been inhabited for at least 15,000 years
by indigenous tribes.[1] After European
exploration and settlement in the 16th century,
the English established their own colonies,
and gained control of others begun by other
European nations, in the eastern portion
of the continent in the 17th and early 18th
centuries. On 4 July 1776, at war with Britain
over fair governance, thirteen of these
colonies declared their independence; in
1783, the war ended in British acceptance
of the new nation. Since then, the country
has more than quadrupled in size: it now
consists of 50 states and one federal district,
and has a number of overseas territories.
At
over 3.7 million square miles (over 9.5
million km²), the U.S. is the third
or fourth largest country by area, depending
on whether or not the disputed areas of
China are included. It is also the world's
third most populous nation, with nearly
300 million people.
The
United States has maintained a liberal democratic
political system since it adopted its Articles
of Confederation on 1 March 1781 and the
Constitution, the Articles' replacement,
on 17 September 1787. American military,
economic, cultural, and political influence
increased throughout the 20th century; with
the collapse of the Soviet Union at the
end of the Cold War, the nation emerged
as the world's sole remaining superpower.[2]
Today, the U.S. continues to play a leading
role in world affairs.
The
United States is the world's third largest
country by land area, after Russia and Canada.[29]
It is bounded by the North Atlantic Ocean
to the east, the North Pacific Ocean to
the west, Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico
to the south, and Canada to the north. Alaska
also borders Canada, with the Pacific Ocean
to its south and the Arctic Ocean to its
north. The state of Hawaii occupies an archipelago
in the Pacific Ocean, southwest of the North
American mainland.
The
U.S. has an extremely varied geography,
particularly in the West. The eastern seaboard
has a coastal plain which is widest in the
south and narrows in the north. The coastal
plain does not exist north of New Jersey,
although there are glacial outwash plains
on Long Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket.
Beyond the coastal plain, the rolling hills
of the piedmont region end at the Appalachian
Mountains which rise above 6,000 feet (1,830
m) in North Carolina and New Hampshire.
From the west slope of the Appalachians,
the Interior Plains of the Midwest are relatively
flat and are the location of the Great Lakes
as well as the Mississippi-Missouri River,
the world's fourth-longest river system.[30]
West of the Mississippi River, the Interior
Plains slope uphill and blend into the vast
and often featureless Great Plains. The
abrupt rise of the Rocky Mountains, at the
western edge of the Great Plains, extends
north to south across the continental U.S.,
reaching altitudes over 14,000 feet (4,270
m) in Colorado.[31] In the past, the Rocky
Mountains had a higher level of volcanic
activity; nowadays, the range only has one
area of volcanism (the supervolcano underlying
Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, possibly
the world's largest volcano), although rift
volcanism has occurred relatively recently
near the Rockies' southern margin in New
Mexico.[32] Dozens of high mountain ranges,
salt flats such as the Bonneville Salt Flats,
and valleys are found in the Great Basin
region located west of the Rockies and east
of the Sierra Nevada, which also has deep
chasms, including the Snake River. At the
southwestern end of the Great Basin, Death
Valley lies below sea level. It is the lowest
point in the Western Hemisphere and is situated
near the Mojave Desert. North of the Great
Basin and east of the Cascades in the Northwest
is the Columbia River Plateau, a large igneous
province shaped by one of the largest flood
basalts ever to appear on Earth. It is marked
by dark black rocks. Surrounding the Four
Corners region lies the Colorado Plateau,
named after the Colorado River, which flows
through it. The Plateau is generally high
in elevation, has highly eroded sandstone,
and is a blood red in some locations with
many national parks, such as Arches, Bryce
Canyon, Grand Canyon, and Zion. West of
the Great Basin, the Sierra Nevada mountain
range has Mount Whitney, the highest peak
in the coterminous U.S. Along the Pacific
coast, the Coast Ranges and the volcanic
Cascade Range extend from north to south
across the country. Alaska has numerous
mountain ranges, including Mount McKinley
(Denali), the highest peak in North America.
Numerous volcanoes can be found throughout
the Alexander and Aleutian Islands extending
south and west of the Alaskan mainland.
The Hawaiian islands are tropical, volcanic
islands extending over 1,500 miles (2,400
km), and consisting of six larger islands
and another dozen smaller ones that are
inhabited.
Wasatch
Range, in Utah, part of the Rocky Mountains,
next to the Great Salt Lake. Mark Twain
described the two as America's Great Wall
and Dead Sea.The U.S. also has the world's
highest quality fluorescent minerals and
the most number of minerals found in any
one location, in an area called the Franklin
Furnace. Rock hunters the world over come
to hunt for minerals, walk through actual
fluorescent mineral mines, and visit mineral
museums in Franklin and Ogdensburg, NJ.
The
climate of the U.S. is as varied as its
landscape. In northern Alaska, tundra and
arctic conditions predominate, and the temperature
has fallen as low as minus 80 °F (-62
°C).[33] On the other end of the spectrum,
Death Valley, California once reached 134
°F (56.7 °C); the second-highest
temperature ever recorded on Earth.[34]
On
average, the mountains of the western states
receive the most snow and are among the
snowiest places on Earth. The greatest annual
snowfall level is at Mount Rainier, in Washington,
at 692 inches (1,757.68 cm); the record
there was 1,122 inches (2849.8 cm) in the
winter of 1971–1972. Other places
with significant snowfall outside the Cascade
Range are the Wasatch Mountains, near the
Great Salt Lake, and the Sierra Nevada,
near Lake Tahoe. In the east, while snowfall
does not approach western levels, the region
near the Great Lakes and the mountains of
the Northeast receive the most. Along the
northwestern Pacific coast, rainfall is
greater than anywhere else in the continental
U.S., with Quinault Ranger in Washington
having an average of 137.21 inches.[35]
Hawaii receives even more, with 460 inches
measured annually on Mount Waialeale, in
Kauai. The Mojave Desert, in the southwest,
is home to the driest locale in the U.S.—Yuma
Valley, Arizona, with an average of 2.63
inches of precipitation each year.[36]
In
central portions of the U.S., tornadoes
are more common than anywhere else on Earth[37]
and touch down most commonly in the spring
and summer. Deadly and destructive hurricanes
occur almost every year along the Atlantic
seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico. The Appalachian
region and the Midwest experience the worst
floods, though virtually no area in the
U.S. is immune to flooding. The Southwest
has the worst droughts; one is thought to
have lasted over 500 years and to have decimated
the Anasazi people.
