USA: United States of America

• population: 293 mil.
• capital: Washington, D.C.
• largest city: New York (8 mil.)
• constitutional republic, federation
  • 50 states and a federal district (Washington, D.C.)

Geography and population

• area: 9,6 mil. sq km (4th largest after Russia, Canada and China)
• climate: mostly temperate, tropical in Hawaii and Florida, arctic in Alaska, semiarid in the Great Plains (west of the Mississippi River), arid in the Great Basin of the southwest
• highest point: Mount McKinley (Alaska) – 6,194 m
• lowest point: Death Valley (California) – 86 m below sea level
• longest river: Mississippi-Missouri 6,2 km
• largest lake: Lake Superior
• borders: Mexico, Canada, Atlantic ocean, Pacific ocean
• Cordilleras divided into several ranges (Rocky mountains, …)
• Great lakes (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario) – 250 000 sq m
• Niagara river, Niagara Falls (51m high, 320 m wide on the US side)

Places of interest

• Washington, D.C.
  • D.C. = District of Columbia
  • the White House (residence of the President), the Capitol (seat of the Congress), the Pentagon (the center of military forces), the Library of Congress
  • the Washington Monument, Lincoln and Jefferson Memorial, the Arlington National Cemetery
• New York
  • famous boroughs: Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx
  • Empire State Building, Broadway, Wall Street, The Statue of Liberty
• San Francisco
  • „Frisco“, Golden gate bridge, prison Alcatraz, Cable car, the most crooked street Lambard Street

National symbols

• flag
  • 13 equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white (= 13 original colonies)
  • with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing 50 small, white, five-pointed stars (= 50 states)

History

• 35-20,000 years ago – first inhabitans from Asia
• 1000 viking explorers
• 1492 – Christopher Columbus, Italian navigator, searched for Orient, landed on the island of San Salvador
• 1620 – Pilgrim Fathers, first settlers of the Plymouth Colony, second established English settlement in the New World
• 1773 – Boston Tea Party – first demonstration of revolt against Britain
• 1776, July 4 – Declaration of Independence (written by Thomas Jefferson)
• 1776-1783 the Revolutionary war
• 1789 – first American president – George Washington
• 1800 – the federal capitol moved from temporary Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.
• 1861-1865 – The Civil War, the South against the North
  • 1860 – Abraham Lincoln elected as the american president
  • more than 600,000 people died
• 1929 – the Great Depression – stock market crashed
• 1945-1989 Cold War

Federal public holidays

• New year’s day
• Martin Luther King’s day
  • M. L. King – black leader, civil-rights campaigner, assassinated
• Presidents‘ day
• Memorial day
• Independence day (July 4)
  • honors the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776
• Labor day
• Veterans‘ day (November 11)
• Thanksgiving day
  • first celebrated in 1621
• Chrismas day

National parks

• Yellowstone (northwest Wyoming) – world’s first national park, waterfalls, thermal pools, erupting geysers
• California Redwoods – the tallest kind of trees on earth (= redwoods; 110 m high)
• Grand Canyon
• California’s Death Valley