HISTORY

America was discovered by Christopher Columb in 1492, when a vast process of European collonisation started.

Name

The term Americas, for the lands of the western hemisphere, was coined in the early sixteenth century (1507) after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer and cartographer. It was written on a global map of the world by Martin Waldseemuller, cartographer. The full name of the country was first used officially in the Declaration of Independence on July4th 1776.

At present

The country is situated almost entirely in the western hemisphere: its fifty contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie in central North America 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 the state of Hawaii is in the mid-Pacific. U.S. territories, or insular areas, are scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific. The Federal District of Columbia was a donation, in equal parts, from Maryland and Virginia states.

At 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 land area and population.

A liberal democracy (stated in the adopted Constitution on September17 1787), the U.S. is one of the world's most ethnically and socially diverse nations, the product of large-scale immigration from almost every corner of the globe. Its national economy is the world's largest,army has also greatly improved during the 20th century.