THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The Climate

• The country’s climatic zones range from subtropical to sub-arctic and tundra, from humid continental to Mediterranean-type climates.Hot winds blowing from the Gulf of Mexica often bring typhoons.Temperatures vary from southern Florida, where the visitors come to sunbathe in December, to northern Alaska, where, in winter, the temperature may drop to -80 C.

• The United States of America (commonly called the United States, the U.S., theUSA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic consisting of 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 andMexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait.At 3.76 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with over 314 million people, the United States is the third- or fourth-largest country by total area, and the third-largest by both land area and population.

Population• It is one of the world's most  ethnically

diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.

• There are Asians, whites, blacks,American Indians, Eskimos, Hispanics or Latinos.Hispanics form the second largest ethnic minority in the country after the nation’s 34 million blacks.Newcomers are often surprised by the variety of skin colours they see.Americans take it for granted.

History• The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland,

including Alaska Natives, are believed to have migrated from Asia, beginning between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago. Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After Europeans began settling the Americas, many millions of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported diseases .

• In 1492 while under contract to Spanish crown, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus discovered several Caribbean islands and made first contact with the indigenous people.

• The national flag of the United States of America, often simply referred to as theAmerican flag, consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton (referred to specifically as the "union") bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars .The 50 stars on the flag represent the 50 states of the United States of America and the 13 stripes represent the thirteen British colonies that declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain and became the first states in the Union. Nicknames for the flag include the "Stars and Stripes", "Old Glory",and "The Star-Spangled Banner" 

• The Great Seal of the United States is used to authenticate certain documents issued by the United States federal government. The Great Seal was first used publicly in 1782. The supporter of the shield is a bald eagle with its wings outstretched. From the eagle's perspective, it holds a bundle of 13 arrows in its left talon, (referring to the13 original states), and an olive branch in its right talon, together symbolizing that the United States of America has "a strong desire for peace, but will always be ready for war." Although not specified by law, the olive branch is usually depicted with 13 leaves and 13 olives, again representing the 13 original states

 E pluribus unum "Out of Many, One". 

Etymology• In 1507, German 

cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" after Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.

• On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "La Florida" - the first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland. Spanish settlements in the region were followed by ones in the present-day southwestern United States. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; France eventually claimed much of the North American interior, down to the Gulf of Mexico

• The first successful English settlements were the Virginia Colony in Jamestownin 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of theMassachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration1634.

• By 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to Britain's American colonies. Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.

• In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans, who were being displaced, thirteen colonies had a population of 2.6 million in 1770, nearly one in five Americans were black slaves.

 The Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day.

• Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860.  Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared slaves in the Confederacy to be free. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,made them citizens, and gave them voting rights.