About USA

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. ~ J. F. Kennedy The United States of America is a country of the western hemisphere, comprising fifty states and numerous territories. Forty-eight contiguous states lie in central North America between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bound 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. The United States is a federal constitutional republic; Washington, its capital, is coextensive with the District of Columbia (D. C. ), the federal capital district.

At over 3. 7 million square miles (over 9. 6 million km?) and with over 300 million people, the United States is the third largest country by both total area and population.

With a gross domestic product (GDP) of over $13 trillion, the U. S. has the largest national economy in the world.

GDP per capita ranks first among the larger economies of the world, and third or eighth overall, depending on the measurement. The product of large-scale historical immigration and home to a complex social structure as well as a wide array of household arrangements, the U. S. is one of the worlds most ethnically and socially diverse nations.

The nation was founded by thirteen colonies declaring their independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776 and ratifying the Articles of Confederation, on March 1, 1781. It adopted the current constitution on September 17, 1787. The country greatly expanded in territory throughout the 19th century acquiring lands from France, Mexico, and Russia. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it became the worlds sole remaining superpower.

The United States continues to exert dominant economic, political, cultural, and military influence around the globe.

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 Waldseemuller who, while working in Saint-Die-des-Vosges in 1507, created a globe and a large map showing North and South America. Although the origin of the name is uncertain, the most widely held belief is that expressed in an accompanying book[citation needed], Cosmographiae Introductio, which explains it as the feminine version of the Latin name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (Americus Vespucius); in Latin, the other continents names were all feminine. Vespucci correctly theorized that Christopher Columbus, on reaching islands in the Caribbean Sea in 1492, had come not to India but to a New World.

The Americas were also known as Columbia, after Columbus, prompting the name District of Columbia for the ...