United States of America
| United States of America | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||
| Motto: "In God We Trust" | ||||
| Anthem: "The Star-Spangled Banner" | ||||
 |
||||
| Capital | Washington, D.C. 38°53′N 77°01′W / 38.883°N 77.017°W | |||
| Largest city | New York City 40°43′N 74°00′W / 40.717°N 74°W | |||
| National language | English | |||
| Ethnic groups | 58% European
|
|||
| Demonym | American | |||
| Government | Federal presidential constitutional republic | |||
| - | President | Joe Biden (D) | ||
| - | Vice President | Kamala Harris (D) | ||
| - | House Speaker | Nancy Pelosi (D) | ||
| Legislature | Congress | |||
| - | Upper house | Senate | ||
| - | Lower house | House of Representatives | ||
| Independence from Great Britain | ||||
| - | Declaration | July 4, 1776 | ||
| - | Confederation | March 1, 1781 | ||
| - | Treaty of Paris | September 3, 1783 | ||
| - | Constitution | June 21, 1788 | ||
| - | Last state admitted | August 21, 1959 | ||
| - | Water (%) | 4.66[1] | ||
| - | Total land area | 3,531,905 sqmi | ||
| Population | ||||
| - | 2021 estimate | 331,893,745[2] | ||
| GDP (PPP) | 2022 estimate | |||
| - | Total |  $24.8 trillion[3] (2nd) |
||
| - | Per capita | $74,725[3] (8th) |
||
| GDP (nominal) | 2022 estimate | |||
| - | Total | $24.8 trillion[3] (1st) |
||
| - | Per capita | $74,725[3] (5th) |
||
| HDI (2019) | 0.926[4] very high · 17th |
|||
| Currency | U.S. dollar ($) (USD) |
|||
| Time zone | (UTC−4 to −12, +10, +11) | |||
| - | Summer (DST) | (UTC−4 to −10) | ||
| Date format | mm/dd/yyyy | |||
| Drives on the | right | |||
| Calling code | +1 | |||
| ISO 3166 code | US | |||
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to its east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait, and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean. The United States also possesses several territories, or insular areas, that are scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.
At 9.3 million km² and with over 300 million people, the United States is the third largest country by contiguous land in the Americas (after Brazil and Canada), and third largest by land area and by population.
Contents
History
The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic coast of North America. The first American citizens were individuals of European descent: English, Scottish, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian. In response to what they viewed as abusive treatment from the Crown, they declared independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776, and subsequently defeated Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence.[5] A federal convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single federal republic. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments, was ratified in 1791.
In the nineteenth century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of slavery in the United States.
Demographics
Whites account for under half the births in the USA.[6] and in a few years will no longer be the majority.[7] By 2043, it's expected that whites throughout the USA will be a minority.[8]
In many large cities in the USA, whites already have become minorities such as Tucson, Denver, Phoenix, and so on.[9]
Because of illegal immigration, whites are no longer the majority in California. Hispanics became the majority in 2014.[10][11][12][13] The U.S. government will not control its own borders.
The USA today is called a "nation of immigrants." This a phrase was popularized by John F. Kennedy who wrote the 1958 book “A Nation of Immigrants” at the request of the Anti-Defamation League.[14] The phrase “melting pot” was coined by the Jew Israel Zangwill in a 1905 play, The Melting Pot. The poem The New Colossus on the Statue of Liberty with, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" was written by the Jewess Emma Lazarus back in 1883.
Evian
The Évian Conference was convened 6–15 July 1938 at Évian-les-Bains, in France, to address the problem of Jewish refugees from Europe. It was the initiative of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt who hoped to obtain commitments from some of the invited nations to accept more Jews. Historians have suggested that Roosevelt desired to deflect attention and criticism from official American policy that severely limited the quota of Jewish refugees admitted to the United States.[15] The conference was attended by representatives from 32 countries, presenting plans either orally or in writing. 24 voluntary organizations also attended as observers, one of whom was the Jewish Golda Meir from Palestine. Some 200 international journalists gathered at Évian to observe and report on the meeting. The Soviet Union refused to take part in the conference. The delegations from the 32 participating nations failed to come to any agreement. The conference therefore proved to be a useful propaganda tool for the German government which was engaged in actively promoting Jewish emigration.
Current
Since 2014, based on a nationwide average of all schools together, white students are now a minority in US schools.[16]
Language
The English language is the official language of at least 28 states. Some sources give a higher figure, based on differing definitions of "official". English and Hawaiian are both official languages in the state of Hawaii. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language. Whether the United States or the People's Republic of China is larger is disputed. The figure given is from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook. Other sources give smaller figures.
All authoritative calculations of the country's size include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia, not the territories. The population estimate includes people whose usual residence is in the fifty states and the District of Columbia, including noncitizens. It does not include either those living in the territories, amounting to more than 4 million U.S. citizens (most in Puerto Rico), or U.S. citizens living outside the United States.
See also
- Timeline of Europeans in America
- Racial makeup of the U.S. population
- Portal:United States of America
Further reading
- Heinrich Piebrock: "Germans helped build America - and how has America repaid them?" (The book in HTML, Cover text)
External links
Encyclopedias
- Encyclopedia Britannica: United States
- Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 Edition: United States
- Encyclopedia.com: United States
References
- ↑ Surface water and surface water change. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2015).
- ↑ Bureau, US Census. New Vintage 2021 Population Estimates Available for the Nation, States and Puerto Rico.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 World Economic Outlook Database, October 2021. International Monetary Fund.
- ↑ Human Development Report 2020: The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene (en). United Nations Development Programme (December 15, 2020).
- ↑ Dull, Jonathan R. (2003). "Diplomacy of the Revolution, to 1783," p. 352, chap. in A Companion to the American Revolution, ed. Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole. Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, pp. 352–361. ISBN 1405116749.
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/us/whites-account-for-under-half-of-births-in-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
- ↑ http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/15/news/economy/minority-majority/index.html
- ↑ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57558742/census-whites-no-longer-a-majority-in-u.s-by-2043/
- ↑ http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Latinos-are-flocking-to-biggest-cities-Whites-2490442.php
- ↑ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57566998/hispanics-predicted-to-become-majority-in-california-in-2014/
- ↑ http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/01/californias-hispanics-to-outnumber-whites-by-the-end-of-the-year-2542380.html
- ↑ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/whites-no-longer-the-majority-in-california-754328.html
- ↑ http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/33-871-648-Hispanics-Now-Make-Up-Third-Of-2936788.php
- ↑ http://archive.adl.org/immigrants/guide.html "In the Foreword, [ADL Director Abraham] Foxman shares that Kennedy, who was a junior Senator of Massachusetts, accepted ADL’s request to write this essay, and A Nation of Immigrants was published in 1958."
- ↑ Allen Wells (2009). Tropical Zion : General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosua. Duke University Press, 6–8. ISBN 978-0-8223-4407-0.
- ↑ http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BACK_TO_SCHOOL_MAJORITY_MINORITY_ABRIDGED?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-08-09-13-51-17
