america

this from wiki The United States of America is a country of the western hemisphere, comprised of 50 states and several territories. Forty-eight contiguous states lie in central North America between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bounded on land by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south; Alaska is in the northwest of the continent with Canada to its east, and Hawaii is in the mid-Pacific.[2] The United States is a federal constitutional republic with Washington, D.C. as its capital.[3] At over 3.7 million square miles (over 9.6 million km²) and with more than 300 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area and third largest by population.[4] With a 2006 gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $13 trillion USD, the U.S. has the largest economy of any nation, compromising roughly one fifth of the global economy.[5] GDP per capita ranks the U.S. first among large economies and 3rd or 8th overall, depending on measurement. [6] American society is the product of large-scale immigration and is home to a complex social structure[7] as well as a wide array of household arrangements.[8] The U.S. is one of the world's most ethnically and socially diverse nations.[9] The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain who issued the Declaration of Independence from on July 4, 1776. It adopted the current constitution (which has been amended several times subsequently) on September 17, 1787. The country greatly expanded in territory throughout the 19th century, acquiring further territory from the United Kingdom, as well as lands from France, Mexico, Spain, and Russia. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it became the world's sole remaining superpower, and is a declared nuclear weapons state. The United States continues to exert dominant economic, political, cultural and military influence around the globe.[10] Common names and abbreviations of the United States of America include the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., the U.S. of A., the States (informal), and America (colloquially). The earliest known use of the name America is attributed to the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller who, while working in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in 1507, created a globe and a large map showing North and South America.[11] According to the Library of Congress "Waldseemüller christened the new lands "America" in recognition of Amerigo Vespucci’s understanding that a new continent had been uncovered as a result of the voyages of Columbus and other explorers in the late fifteenth century."[12] The designation the States is most often used by citizens of the United States when contrasting their country with other countries, especially when those speakers are abroad, as in the sentence "Things are more expensive here than they are back in the States." U.S. of A is not especially common in the United States itself, but it is heard frequently in other English-speaking countries. The Americas were also known as Columbia, after Columbus, prompting the name District of Columbia for the land set aside as the U.S. capital. Columbia remained a popular name for the United States until the early 20th century, when it fell into relative disuse; it is still used poetically, and appears in various names and titles.[13][14] One female personification of the country is called Columbia.[15] The full name of the country was first used officially in the Declaration of Independence, which was the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" adopted by the "Representatives of the united States of America" on July 4, 1776. On November 15, 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first of which stated "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'" The name was originally proposed by Thomas Paine. The most common adjectival and demonymic form for the United States is American. This term is used to designate U.S. citizens who are abroad, and for cultural characteristics ("American language," "American sports") and is rarely (at least not in English) used to refer to people not connected to the U.S. The word "American" has been especially controversial in Latin America, where Spanish and Portuguese speakers refer to themselves as "americanos" and use the adjective "estadounidense" to describe a person from the United States. The United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by land area alone, after Russia and China and just ahead of Canada.[17] Its contiguous portion 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 (the largest state in area) is bound by Canada to its east, with the Pacific Ocean to its south, the Arctic Ocean to its north, and the Bering Strait to the west. The state of Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, southwest of the North American mainland. US territories are mainly small island nations in the Caribbean (such as Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands) and the South Pacific (such as Guam, Midway Island and American Samoa). These have often have (or had) a military base and/or been considered a strategic location for the United States military. Deciduous vegetation and grasslands prevail in the eastern U.S., transitioning to prairies, boreal forests, and the Rocky Mountains in the west, and deserts in the southwest. In the northeast, the coasts of the Great Lakes and Atlantic seaboard host much of the country's population. Terrain Mount Hood, a dormant volcano in the Pacific Northwest. Mount Hood, a dormant volcano in the Pacific Northwest. The U.S. has an extremely varied geography. 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. In the extreme southeast, Florida is home to the ecologically unique Everglades. 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, Tennessee, 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 4th longest river system.[18] 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 higher than 14,000 feet (4,270 m) in Colorado.[19] 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.[20] Its newest states, Alaska and Hawaii, add considerably to the diversity of the nation's terrain. Alaska has numerous mountain ranges, one of which include 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 spanning 1,500 miles (2,400 km), and consisting of six larger islands and another dozen smaller ones that are inhabited. Climate Climate zones of the lower 48 United States, broadly. Climate zones of the lower 48 United States, broadly. Due to its large size and wide range of geographic features, the United States contains examples of nearly every global climate. The climate is temperate in most areas, tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida, polar in Alaska, semiarid in the Great Plains west of the 100th meridian, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and arid in the Great Basin. Its comparatively generous climate contributed (in part) to the country's rise as a world power, with infrequent severe drought in the major agricultural regions, a general lack of widespread flooding, and a mainly temperate climate that receives adequate precipitation. thanks alot

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