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United States

The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands,[g] and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area.[b] It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations.[h] With a population of over 333 million,[i] it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City.

United States of America
Motto: 
Other traditional mottos:[2]
Anthem: "The Star-Spangled Banner"[3]
CapitalWashington, D.C.
38°53′N 77°01′W / 38.883°N 77.017°W / 38.883; -77.017
Largest cityNew York City
40°43′N 74°00′W / 40.717°N 74.000°W / 40.717; -74.000
National languageEnglish (de facto)
Ethnic groups
(2020)[4][5][6]
By race:
By Hispanic or Latino origin:
Religion
(2021)[7]
  • 29% No religion
  • 6% Other
  • 2% Unanswered
Demonym(s)American[a][8]
GovernmentFederal presidential constitutional republic
• President
Joe Biden
Kamala Harris
Kevin McCarthy
John Roberts
LegislatureCongress
Senate
House of Representatives
Independence 
July 4, 1776 (1776-07-04)
March 1, 1781 (1781-03-01)
September 3, 1783 (1783-09-03)
June 21, 1788 (1788-06-21)
Area
• Total area
3,796,742 sq mi (9,833,520 km2)[9] (3rd[b])
• Water (%)
4.66[10] (2015)
• Land area
3,531,905 sq mi (9,147,590 km2) (3rd)
Population
• 2022 estimate
333,287,557[11]
• 2020 census
331,449,281[c][12] (3rd)
• Density
87/sq mi (33.6/km2) (185th)
GDP (PPP)2022 estimate
• Total
$25.035 trillion[13] (2nd)
• Per capita
$75,180[13] (8th)
GDP (nominal)2022 estimate
• Total
$25.035 trillion[13] (1st)
• Per capita
$75,180[13] (7th)
Gini (2020) 46.9[14]
high
HDI (2021) 0.921[15]
very high · 21st
CurrencyU.S. dollar ($) (USD)
Time zoneUTC−4 to −12, +10, +11
• Summer (DST)
UTC−4 to −10[d]
Date formatmm/dd/yyyy[e]
Driving sideright[f]
Calling code+1
ISO 3166 codeUS
Internet TLD.us

Paleo-Americans migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago, and are the ancestors of modern Native Americans. Colonization by Europeans began in the 16th century. Great Britain's Thirteen Colonies, in what is now the eastern U.S., quarreled with the British Crown over taxation and political representation, leading to the American Revolution (1765–1791). After the Revolution, the United States gained independence, the first nation-state founded on Enlightenment principles of liberal democracy. In the late 18th century, the U.S. began expanding across North America, gradually obtaining new territories, sometimes through war, frequently displacing Native Americans, and admitting new states. By 1848, the United States spanned the continent from east to west. The controversy surrounding the practice of slavery culminated in the secession of the Confederate States of America, which fought the remaining states of the Union during the American Civil War (1861–1865). With the Union's victory and preservation, slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment.

By 1890, the United States had grown to become the world's largest economy, and the Spanish–American War and World War I established the country as a world power. After Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. entered World War II on the Allied side. The aftermath of the war left the United States and the Soviet Union as the world's two superpowers and led to the Cold War, which commenced in 1945 and ended in 1991 with the Soviet Union's dissolution. During the Cold War, both countries engaged in a struggle for ideological dominance but avoided direct military conflict. They also competed in the Space Race, which culminated in the 1969 American spaceflight in which the U.S. was the first nation to land humans on the Moon. Simultaneously, the civil rights movement (1954–1968) led to legislation abolishing state and local Jim Crow laws and other codified racial discrimination against African Americans. With the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991 and the end of the Cold War, the United States emerged as the world's sole superpower. In 2001, following the September 11 attacks, the United States became a lead member of the Global War on Terrorism, which saw its involvement in the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) and the Iraq War (2003–2011).

The United States Government is a federal republic with three separate branches of government, including a bicameral legislature. It is a liberal democracy and has a market economy. It ranks very high in international measures of quality of life, income and wealth, economic competitiveness, human rights, innovation, and education; it has low levels of perceived corruption. The United States has the highest median income per person of any polity in the world, although it has high levels of incarceration and inequality and lacks universal health care. As a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, the U.S. has been shaped by centuries of immigration.

The United States is a highly developed country, and its economy accounts for approximately a quarter of global GDP and is the world's largest by GDP at market exchange rates. By value, the United States is the world's largest importer and second-largest exporter. Although it accounts for just over 4.2% of the world's total population, the U.S. holds over 30% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share held by any country. The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, and NATO, and is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The country makes up more than a third of global military spending and is the foremost military power in the world and a leading political, cultural, and scientific force.

Etymology

The first known use of the name "America" dates to 1507, when it appeared on a world map produced by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in Saint Dié, Lorraine (now northeastern France). On his map, the name is shown in large letters on what would now be considered South America, honoring Amerigo Vespucci. The Italian explorer was the first to postulate that the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern limit but were part of a previously unknown landmass.[25][26] In 1538, the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator used the name "America" to refer to the entire Western Hemisphere.[27]

The first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" dates back to a letter from January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan to Joseph Reed, George Washington's aide-de-camp. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort.[28][29][30] The first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, on April 6, 1776.[31]

The second draft of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, prepared by John Dickinson and completed no later than June 17, 1776, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the 'United States of America'."[32] The final version of the Articles, sent to the states for ratification in late 1777, stated that "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'."[33] In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence.[32] This draft of the document did not surface until June 21, 1776, and it is unclear whether it was written before or after Dickinson used the term in his June 17 draft of the Articles of Confederation.[32]

The phrase "United States" was originally plural in American usage. It described a collection of states—e.g., "the United States are..." The singular form became popular after the end of the Civil War and is now standard usage. A citizen of the United States is called an "American". "United States", "American", and "U.S." refer to the country adjectivally ("American values", "U.S. forces"). In English, the word "American" rarely refers to topics or subjects not directly connected with the United States.[34]

History

Early history

 
Cliff Palace, located in present-day Colorado, was built by the Ancestral Puebloans between AD 1190 and 1260.

It is generally accepted that the first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 12,000 years ago; however, some evidence suggests an even earlier date of arrival.[35][36][37] The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BC, is believed to represent the first wave of human settlement of the Americas.[38][39] This was likely the first of three major waves of migration into North America; later waves brought the ancestors of present-day Athabaskans, Aleuts, and Eskimos.[40]

Over time, indigenous cultures in North America grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in the southeast, developed advanced agriculture, architecture, and complex societies.[41] The city-state of Cahokia is the largest, most complex pre-Columbian archaeological site in the modern-day United States.[42] In the Four Corners region, Ancestral Puebloan culture developed from centuries of agricultural experimentation.[43] The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups. This grouping consists of the peoples who speak Algonquian languages.[44] Historically, these peoples were prominent along the Atlantic Coast and into the interior along the Saint Lawrence River and around the Great Lakes. Before Europeans came into contact, most Algonquian settlements lived by hunting and fishing, although many supplemented their diet by cultivating corn, beans and squash (the "Three Sisters"). The Ojibwe cultivated wild rice.[45] The Haudenosaunee confederation of the Iroquois, located in the southern Great Lakes region, was established at some point between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.[46]

Estimating the native population of North America during European contact is difficult.[47][48] Douglas H. Ubelaker of the Smithsonian Institution estimated a population of 93,000 in the South Atlantic states and a population of 473,000 in the Gulf states,[49] but most academics regard this figure as too low.[47] Anthropologist Henry F. Dobyns believed the populations were much higher, suggesting around 1.1 million along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, 2.2 million people living between Florida and Massachusetts, 5.2 million in the Mississippi Valley and tributaries, and around 700,000 people in the Florida peninsula.[47][48]

Colonial America

 
The Mayflower Compact signed on the Mayflower in 1620 set an early precedent for self-government and constitutionalism.

Claims of very early colonization of coastal New England by the Norse are disputed and controversial.[50][51] Christopher Columbus had landed in Puerto Rico on his 1493 voyage, and San Juan was settled by the Spanish a decade later.[52] The first documented arrival of Europeans in the continental United States is that of Spanish conquistadors such as Juan Ponce de León, who made his first expedition to Florida in 1513.[53] The Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, sent by France to the New World in 1525, encountered |Native American inhabitants of what is now called New York Bay.[54] The Spanish set up the first settlements in Florida and New Mexico, such as Saint Augustine, often considered the nation's oldest city,[55] and Santa Fe. The French established their own settlements along the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, notably New Orleans and Mobile.[56]

Successful English settlement of the eastern coast of North America began with the Virginia Colony in 1607 at Jamestown and with the Pilgrims' colony at Plymouth in 1620.[57][58] The continent's first elected legislative assembly, Virginia's House of Burgesses, was founded in 1619. Harvard College was established in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 as the first institution of higher education. The Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for representative self-government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies.[59][60] Many English settlers were dissenting Christians who came seeking religious freedom. The native population of America declined after European arrival for various reasons,[61][62][63] primarily from diseases such as smallpox and measles.[64][65]

 
The original Thirteen Colonies (shown in red) in 1775

In the early days of colonization, many European settlers experienced food shortages, disease, and conflicts with Native Americans, such as in King Philip's War. Native Americans were also often fighting neighboring tribes and European settlers. In many cases the natives and settlers came to depend on each other. Settlers traded for food and animal pelts; natives for guns, tools and other European goods.[66] American Indians taught many settlers to cultivate corn, beans, and other foodstuffs. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Native Americans and urged them to adopt European agricultural practices and lifestyles.[67][68] However, with the increased European colonization of North America, Native Americans were displaced and often killed during conflicts.[69]

European settlers also began trafficking African slaves into Colonial America via the transatlantic slave trade.[70] By the turn of the 18th century, slavery had supplanted indentured servitude as the main source of agricultural labor for the cash crops in the American South.[71] Colonial society was divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery, and several colonies passed acts for or against the practice.[72][73]

The Thirteen Colonies[j] that would become the United States of America were administered by the British as overseas dependencies.[74] All nonetheless had local governments with elections open to white male property owners, except Jews and Catholics in some areas.[75][76][77][78][79] With very high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations.[80] The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest both in religion and in religious liberty.[81]

During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), known in the U.S. as the French and Indian War, British forces captured Canada from the French. With the creation of the Province of Quebec, Canada's francophone population would remain isolated from the English-speaking colonial dependencies of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the Thirteen Colonies. Excluding the Native Americans who lived there, the Thirteen Colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, about a third that of Britain. Despite continuing new arrivals, the rate of natural increase was such that by the 1770s only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas.[82] The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed the development of self-government, but their unprecedented success motivated British monarchs to periodically seek to reassert royal authority.[83]

American Revolution and the early federal republic

 
Declaration of Independence, a painting by John Trumbull, depicts the Committee of Five[k] presenting the draft of the Declaration to the Continental Congress, June 28, 1776, in Philadelphia.

The American Revolution separated the Thirteen Colonies from the British Empire, and was the first successful war of independence by a non-European entity against a European power in modern history. By the 18th century the American Enlightenment and the political philosophies of liberalism were pervasive among leaders. Americans began to develop an ideology of "republicanism", asserting that government rested on the consent of the governed. They demanded their "rights as Englishmen" and "no taxation without representation".[84][85] The British insisted on administering the colonies through a Parliament that did not have a single representative responsible for any American constituency, and the conflict escalated into war.[86]

In 1774, the First Continental Congress passed the Continental Association, which mandated a colonies-wide boycott of British goods. The American Revolutionary War began the following year, catalyzed by events like the Stamp Act and the Boston Tea Party that were rooted in colonial disagreement with British governance.[87][88] The Second Continental Congress, an assembly representing the United Colonies, unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 (annually celebrated as Independence Day).[89] In 1781, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union established a decentralized government that operated until 1789.[89] A celebrated early turn in the war for the Americans was George Washington leading the Americans to cross the frozen Delaware River in a surprise attack the night of December 25–26, 1776. Another victory, in 1777, at the Battle of Saratoga resulted in the capture of a British army, and led to France and Spain joining in the war against them. After the surrender of a second British army at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, Britain signed a peace treaty. American sovereignty became internationally recognized, and the new nation took possession of substantial territory east of the Mississippi River, from what is today Canada in the north and Florida in the south.[90]

As it became increasingly apparent that the Confederation was insufficient to govern the new country, nationalists advocated for and led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in writing the United States Constitution to replace it, ratified in state conventions in 1788. Going into force in 1789, this constitution reorganized the government into a federation administered by three equal branches (executive, judicial and legislative), on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances. George Washington, who had led the Continental Army to victory and then willingly relinquished power, was the first president elected under the new constitution. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.[91] Tensions with Britain remained, however, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a draw.[92]

Although the federal government outlawed American participation in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, after 1820, cultivation of the highly profitable cotton crop exploded in the Deep South, and along with it, the use of slave labor.[93][94][95] The Second Great Awakening, especially in the period 1800–1840, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North, it energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism;[96] in the South, Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations.[97]

In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand further westward, some of them with a sense of manifest destiny.[98][99] The 1803 Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the nation's area,[100] Spain ceded Florida and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819,[101] the Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845 during a period of expansionism,[99] and the 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[102] Additionally, the Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that forcibly resettled Indians. This further expanded acreage under mechanical cultivation, increasing surpluses for international markets. This prompted a long series of American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi River from 1810 to at least 1890.[103] and eventually, conflict with Mexico.[104] Most of these conflicts ended with the cession of Native American territory and their confinement to Indian reservations. Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest, and the U.S. spanned the continent.[98][105] The California Gold Rush of 1848–1849 spurred migration to the Pacific coast, which led to the California Genocide[106] and the creation of additional western states.[107] Economic development was spurred by giving vast quantities of land, nearly 10% of the total area of the United States, to white European settlers as part of the Homestead Acts, as well as making land grants to private railroad companies and colleges.[108] Prior to the Civil War, the prohibition or expansion of slavery into these territories exacerbated tensions over the debate around abolitionism.

The Civil War and Reconstruction

 
Status of the states, 1861
   Slave states that seceded before April 15, 1861
   Slave states that seceded after April 15, 1861
   Union states that permitted slavery (border states)
   Union states that banned slavery
   Territories

Irreconcilable sectional conflict regarding the enslavement of Africans and African Americans ultimately led to the American Civil War.[109] With the 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, conventions in eleven slave states declared secession and formed the Confederate States of America, while the federal government (the "Union") maintained that secession was unconstitutional and illegitimate.[110] On April 12, 1861, the Confederacy initiated military conflict by bombarding Fort Sumter, a federal garrison in Charleston harbor, South Carolina. This would be the spark of the Civil War, which lasted for four years (1861–1865) and became the deadliest military conflict in American history. The war would result in the deaths of approximately 620,000 soldiers from both sides and upwards of 50,000 civilians, almost all of them in the South.[111]

Reconstruction began in earnest following the war. While President Lincoln attempted to foster friendship and forgiveness between the Union and the former Confederacy, his assassination on April 14, 1865 drove a wedge between North and South again. Republicans in the federal government made it their goal to oversee the rebuilding of the South and to ensure the rights of African Americans. They persisted until the Compromise of 1877, when the Republicans agreed to cease enforcing the rights of African Americans in the South in order for Democrats to concede the presidential election of 1876. Influential Southern whites, calling themselves "Redeemers", took control of the South after the end of Reconstruction, beginning the nadir of American race relations. From 1890 to 1910, the Redeemers established so-called Jim Crow laws, disenfranchising almost all blacks and some impoverished whites throughout the region. Blacks would face racial segregation nationwide, especially in the South.[112] They also lived under constant threat of vigilante violence, including lynching.[113]

Industrial Age and the Progressive Era

Film by Edison Studios showing immigrants at Ellis Island in New York Harbor, that was a major entry point for European immigration into the U.S.[114]

In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country's industrialization and transformed its culture.[115]

National infrastructure, including telegraph and transcontinental railroads, spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the American Old West. After the American Civil War, new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade, and increased conflicts with Native Americans.[116] The later inventions of electric light and the telephone would also affect communication and urban life.[117]

Mainland expansion also included the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.[118] In 1893, pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and formed the Republic of Hawaii, which the U.S. annexed in 1898. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year, following the Spanish–American War.[119] American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the Second Samoan Civil War.[120] The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917.[121]

Rapid economic development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries fostered the rise of many prominent industrialists. Tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie led the nation's progress in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. Banking became a major part of the economy, with J. P. Morgan playing a notable role. The American economy boomed, becoming the world's largest.[122] The unequal distribution of wealth remained high during this period. From 1860 to 1900, the wealthiest 2% of American households owned more than a third of the nation's wealth, while the top 10% owned roughly three-quarters of it.[123] The bottom 40% had no wealth at all.[124] In terms of property, the wealthiest 1% owned 51%, while the bottom 44% claimed 1.1%.[124]

These dramatic changes were accompanied by huge increases in immigration, growing inequality and social unrest, which prompted the rise of organized labor along with populist, socialist, and anarchist movements.[125] This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms including health and safety regulation of consumer goods, the rise of labor unions, and greater antitrust measures to ensure competition among businesses and attention to worker conditions.

The rise to world power, the New Deal, and World War II

 
Worker during construction of the Empire State Building in New York City in 1930
 
Mushroom cloud formed by the Trinity Experiment in New Mexico, part of the Manhattan Project, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in history, July 1945

The United States remained neutral from the outbreak of World War I in 1914 until 1917 when it joined the war as an "associated power" alongside the Allies of World War I, helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson took a leading diplomatic role at the Paris Peace Conference and advocated strongly for the U.S. to join the League of Nations. However, the Senate refused to approve this and did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles that established the League of Nations.[126]

Around this time, millions of rural African Americans began a mass migration from the South to northern urban centers; it would continue until about 1970.[127] The last vestiges of the Progressive Era resulted in women's suffrage and alcohol prohibition.[128][129][130] In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage.[131] The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of radio for mass communication and the invention of early television.[132] The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal.[133] The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.[134]

At first neutral during World War II, the United States in March 1941 began supplying materiel to the Allies. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join the Allies against the Axis powers, and in the following year, to intern about 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans.[135][136] The U.S. pursued a "Europe first" defense policy,[137] leaving the Philippines, an American colony, isolated and alone to fight Japan's invasion and occupation until the U.S.-led Philippines campaign (1944–1945). During the war, the United States was one of the "Four Powers"[138] who met to plan the postwar world, along with Britain, the Soviet Union, and China.[139][140] The United States emerged relatively unscathed from the war, and with even greater economic and military influence.[141]

The United States played a leading role in the Bretton Woods and Yalta conferences, which signed agreements on new international financial institutions and Europe's postwar reorganization. As an Allied victory was won in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.[142] The United States developed the first nuclear weapons and used them on Japan in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; the Japanese surrendered on September 2, ending World War II.[143][144]

Cold War and late 20th century

 
Post–World War II economic expansion in the U.S. led to suburban development and urban sprawl, as shown in this aerial photograph of Levittown, Pennsylvania, circa 1959.

After World War II, the United States financed and implemented the Marshall Plan to help rebuild western Europe; disbursements paid between 1948 and 1952 would total $13 billion ($115 billion in 2021).[145] Also at this time, geopolitical tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union led to the Cold War, driven by an ideological divide between capitalism and communism.[146] They dominated the military affairs of Europe, with the U.S. and its NATO allies on one side and the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies on the other.[147] The U.S. often opposed Third World movements that it viewed as Soviet-sponsored, sometimes pursuing direct action for regime change against left-wing governments.[148] American troops fought the communist forces in the Korean War of 1950–1953,[149] and the U.S. became increasingly involved in the Vietnam War (1955–1975), introducing combat forces in 1965.[150] Their competition to achieve superior spaceflight capability led to the Space Race, which culminated in the U.S. becoming the first nation to land people on the Moon in 1969.[149] While both countries engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear weapons, they avoided direct military conflict.[147]

At home, the United States experienced sustained economic expansion, urbanization, and a rapid growth of its population and middle class following World War II. Construction of an Interstate Highway System transformed the nation's transportation infrastructure in decades to come.[151][152] In 1959, the United States admitted Alaska and Hawaii to become the 49th and 50th states, formally expanding beyond the contiguous United States.[153]

 
Martin Luther King Jr. gives his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington, 1963.

The growing civil rights movement used nonviolence to confront racism, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader and figurehead.[154] President Lyndon B. Johnson initiated legislation that led to a series of policies addressing poverty and racial inequalities, in what he termed the "Great Society". The launch of a "War on Poverty" expanded entitlements and welfare spending, leading to the creation of the Food Stamp Program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, along with national health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid.[155] A combination of court decisions and legislation, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1968, made significant improvements.[156][157][158] Meanwhile, a counterculture movement grew, which was fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War, the Black Power movement, and the sexual revolution.[159] The women's movement in the U.S. broadened the debate on women's rights and made gender equality a major social goal. The 1960s Sexual Revolution liberalized American attitudes to sexuality;[160] the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City marked the beginning of the fledgling gay rights movement.[161][162]

The United States supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War; in response, the country faced an oil embargo from OPEC nations, sparking the 1973 oil crisis. The presidency of Richard Nixon saw the American withdrawal from Vietnam but also the Watergate scandal, which led to his resignation in disgrace and a decline in public trust of government that expanded for decades.[163] After a surge in female labor participation around the 1970s, by 1985, the majority of women aged 16 and over were employed.[164] The 1970s and early 1980s also saw the onset of stagflation.

 
U.S. president Ronald Reagan (left) and Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit in 1985

After his election in 1980 President Ronald Reagan responded to economic stagnation with neoliberal reforms and initiated the more aggressive rollback strategy towards the Soviet Union.[165][166][167] During Reagan's presidency, the federal debt held by the public nearly tripled in nominal terms, from $738 billion to $2.1 trillion.[168] This led to the United States moving from the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation.[169] The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended the Cold War,[170][171][172] ensuring a global unipolarity[173] in which the U.S. was unchallenged as the world's dominant superpower.[174]

Fearing the spread of regional international instability from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, in August 1991, President George H. W. Bush launched and led the Gulf War against Iraq, expelling Iraqi forces and restoring the Kuwaiti monarchy.[175] During the administration of President Bill Clinton in 1994, the U.S. signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), causing trade among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to soar.[176] Due to the dot-com boom, stable monetary policy, and reduced social welfare spending, the 1990s saw the longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history.[177]

21st century

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorist hijackers flew passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 people.[178] In response, President George W. Bush launched the War on Terror, which included a nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021 and the 2003–2011 Iraq War.[179][180] Government policy designed to promote affordable housing,[181] widespread failures in corporate and regulatory governance,[182] and historically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve[183] led to a housing bubble in 2006. This culminated in the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession, the nation's largest economic contraction since the Great Depression.[184]

Barack Obama, the first multiracial[185] president with African-American ancestry, was elected in 2008 amid the financial crisis.[186] By the end of his second term, the stock market, median household income and net worth, and the number of persons with jobs were all at record levels, while the unemployment rate was well below the historical average.[187][188][189][190][191] His signature legislative accomplishment was the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as "Obamacare". It represented the U.S. health care system's most significant regulatory overhaul and expansion of coverage since Medicare in 1965. As a result, the uninsured share of the population was cut in half, while the number of newly insured Americans was estimated to be between 20 and 24 million.[192] After Obama served two terms, Republican Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president in 2016. His election is viewed as one of the biggest political upsets in American history.[193] Trump held office through the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting COVID-19 recession starting in 2020 that exceeded even the Great Recession earlier in the century.[194]

The early 2020s saw the country become more divided, with various social issues sparking debate and protest. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 led to widespread civil unrest in urban centers and a national debate about police brutality and lingering institutional racism.[195] The nationwide increase in the frequency of instances and number of deaths related to mass shootings added to the societal tensions.[196] On January 6, 2021, supporters of the outgoing president, Trump, stormed the U.S. Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to disrupt the Electoral College vote count that would confirm Democrat Joe Biden as the 46th president.[197] In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that there is no constitutional right to an abortion, causing another wave of protests across the country and stoking international reactions as well.[198] Despite these divisions, the country has remained unified against Russia after Vladimir Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with politicians and individuals across the political spectrum supporting arms shipments to Ukraine and many large American corporations pulling out of Russia and Belarus altogether.[199]

Geography

 
Topographic map of the United States
 
Denali, or Mount McKinley, in Alaska, the highest mountain peak in North America

The 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia occupy a combined area of 3,119,885 square miles (8,080,470 km2). Of this area, 2,959,064 square miles (7,663,940 km2) is contiguous land, composing 83.65% of total U.S. land area.[200][201] About 15% is occupied by Alaska, a state in northwestern North America, with the remainder in Hawaii, a state and archipelago in the central Pacific, and the five populated but unincorporated insular territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.[202] Measured by only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, and just ahead of Canada.[203]

The United States is the world's third- or fourth-largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia and Canada and nearly equal to China. The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted, and how the total size of the United States is measured.[b][204]

The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont.[205] The Appalachian Mountains and the Adirondack massif divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest.[206] The MississippiMissouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast.[206]

The Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking at over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado.[207] Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua, Sonoran, and Mojave.[208] The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast, both ranges also reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m). The lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States are in the state of California,[209] and only about 84 miles (135 km) apart.[210] At an elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m), Alaska's Denali is the highest peak in the country and in North America.[211] Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.[212]

Climate

 

The United States, with its large size and geographic variety, includes most climate types. To the east of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south.[213]

The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Many mountainous areas of the American West have an alpine climate. The climate is arid in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon and Washington and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Hawaii and the southern tip of Florida are tropical, as well as its territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific.[214]

States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur in the country, mainly in Tornado Alley areas in the Midwest and South.[215] Overall, the United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country in the world.[216]

Extreme weather has become more frequent in the U.S., with three times the number of reported heat waves as in the 1960s. Of the ten warmest years ever recorded in the 48 contiguous states, eight have occurred since 1998. In the American Southwest, droughts have become more persistent and more severe.[217]

Biodiversity and conservation

 
The bald eagle has been the national bird of the United States since 1782.[218]

The U.S. is one of 17 megadiverse countries containing large numbers of endemic species: about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and more than 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland.[219] The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 birds, 311 reptiles, and 295 amphibians,[220] and 91,000 insect species.[221]

There are 63 national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas, which are managed by the National Park Service.[222] Altogether, the government owns about 28% of the country's land area,[223] mostly in the western states.[224] Most of this land is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching, and about .86% is used for military purposes.[225][226]

Environmental issues include debates on oil and nuclear energy, dealing with air and water pollution, the economic costs of protecting wildlife, logging and deforestation,[227][228] and climate change.[229][230] The most prominent environmental agency is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created by presidential order in 1970.[231] The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act.[232] The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is intended to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.[233]

As of 2020, the U.S. ranked 24th among nations in the Environmental Performance Index.[234] The country joined the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2016, and has many other environmental commitments.[235] It withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2020[236] but rejoined it in 2021.[237]

Government and politics

 
The United States Capitol, where Congress meets: the Senate, left; the House, right
 
The White House, residence and workplace of the U.S. President

The United States is a federal republic of 50 states, a federal district, five territories and several uninhabited island possessions.[238][239][240] It is the world's oldest surviving federation, and, according to the World Economic Forum, the oldest democracy as well.[241] It is a representative democracy "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law."[242] Major democracy indexes uniformly classify the country as a liberal democracy,[243] although the The Economist's Democracy Index has noted growing and high levels of political polarization during the late 2010s and early 2020s.[244][245] The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index and Global Corruption Barometer by the German organization Transparency International ranks the country as having low levels of actual and perceived corruption.[246][247]

In the American federal system, sovereignty is shared between two levels of government: federal and state. Citizens of the states are also governed by local governments, which are administrative divisions of the states. The territories are administrative divisions of the federal government. The U.S. Constitution serves as the country's supreme legal document. The Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government and its relationship with the individual states. The Constitution has been amended 27 times;[248] the first ten amendments (Bill of Rights) and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of Americans' individual rights. All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial review, and any law can be voided if the courts determine that it violates the Constitution. The principle of judicial review, not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was established by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803).[249]

The United States has operated under a two-party system for most of its history,[250] although what the two parties are has changed over time: the country is currently in either the Fifth or Sixth Party System. In current American political culture, the center-right Republican Party is considered "conservative" and the center-left Democratic Party is considered "liberal".[251]

Federal government

The federal government comprises three branches, which are headquartered in Washington, D.C. and regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the Constitution.[252]

The lower house, the House of Representatives, has 435 voting members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population. Each state then draws single-member districts to conform with the census apportionment. The District of Columbia and the five major U.S. territories each have one member of Congress—these members are not allowed to vote.[257]

The upper house, the Senate, has 100 members with each state having two senators, elected at large to six-year terms; one-third of Senate seats are up for election every two years. The District of Columbia and the five major U.S. territories do not have senators.[257] The Senate is unique among upper houses in being the most prestigious and powerful portion of the country's bicameral system; political scientists have frequently labeled it the "most powerful upper house" of any government.[258]

The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The president is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned to the states and the District of Columbia.[259] The Supreme Court, led by the chief justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.[260]

Political subdivisions

Each of the 50 states holds jurisdiction over a geographic territory, where it shares sovereignty with the federal government. They are subdivided into counties or county equivalents, and further divided into municipalities. The District of Columbia is a federal district that contains the capital of the United States, the city of Washington.[261] Each state has an amount of presidential electors equal to the number of their representatives plus senators in Congress, and the District of Columbia has three electors.[262] Territories of the United States do not have presidential electors, therefore people there cannot vote for the president.[257]

Citizenship is granted at birth in all states, the District of Columbia, and all major U.S. territories except American Samoa.[l][266][263] The United States observes limited tribal sovereignty of the American Indian nations, like states' sovereignty. American Indians are U.S. citizens and tribal lands are subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress and the federal courts. Like the states, tribes have some autonomy restrictions. They are prohibited from making war, engaging in their own foreign relations, and printing or issuing independent currency.[267] Indian reservations are usually contained within one state, but there are 12 reservations that cross state boundaries.[268]

AlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWest VirginiaWisconsinWyomingDelawareMarylandNew HampshireNew JerseyMassachusettsConnecticutDistrict of ColumbiaWest VirginiaVermontRhode Island 

Foreign relations

 
The United Nations headquarters has been situated along the East River in Midtown Manhattan since 1952. The United States is a founding member of the UN.

The United States has an established structure of foreign relations, and it had the world's second-largest diplomatic corps in 2019.[269] It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council,[270] and home to the United Nations headquarters.[271] The United States is also a member of the G7,[272] G20,[273] and OECD intergovernmental organizations.[274] Almost all countries have embassies and many have consulates (official representatives) in the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host formal diplomatic missions with United States, except Iran,[275] North Korea,[276] and Bhutan.[277] Though Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic relations with the U.S., it maintains close, if unofficial, relations. The United States also regularly supplies Taiwan with military equipment.[278]

The United States has a "Special Relationship" with the United Kingdom[279] and strong ties with Canada,[280] Australia,[281] New Zealand,[282] the Philippines,[283] Japan,[284] South Korea,[285] Israel,[286] and several European Union countries (France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Poland).[287] The U.S. works closely with its NATO allies on military and national security issues, and with nations in the Americas through the Organization of American States and the United States–Mexico–Canada Free Trade Agreement. In South America, Colombia is traditionally considered to be the closest ally of the United States.[288][289] The U.S. exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau through the Compact of Free Association.[290] The U.S. has become a key ally of Ukraine since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 in 2014 and began an invasion of Ukraine in 2022, significantly deteriorating relations with Russia in the process.[291] The U.S. has also experienced a deterioration of relations with China and grown closer to Taiwan.[292][293][294]

Military

 
The Pentagon, near Washington, D.C., is home to the U.S. Department of Defense.

The president is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Department of Defense, which is headquartered at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., administers five of the six service branches, which are made up of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force. The Coast Guard is administered by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and can be transferred to the Department of the Navy in wartime.[295] The United States spent $649 billion on its military in 2019, 36% of global military spending. At 4.7% of GDP, the percentage was the second-highest among all countries, after Saudi Arabia.[296] It also has more than 40% of the world's nuclear weapons, the second-largest after Russia.[297]

In 2019, all six branches of the U.S. Armed Forces reported 1.4 million personnel on active duty.[298] The Reserves and National Guard brought the total number of troops to 2.3 million.[298] The Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not including contractors.[299] Military service in the United States is voluntary, although conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System.[300] The United States has the third-largest combined armed forces in the world, behind the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Indian Armed Forces.[301]

Today, American forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of transport aircraft, the Navy's 11 active aircraft carriers, and Marine expeditionary units at sea with the Navy, and Army's XVIII Airborne Corps and 75th Ranger Regiment deployed by Air Force transport aircraft. The Air Force can strike targets across the globe through its fleet of strategic bombers, maintains the air defense across the United States, and provides close air support to Army and Marine Corps ground forces.[302][303]

The Space Force operates the Global Positioning System, operates the Eastern and Western Ranges for all space launches, and operates the United States's Space Surveillance and Missile Warning networks.[304][305][306] The military operates about 800 bases and facilities abroad,[307] and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries.[308]

Law enforcement and crime

 
Total incarceration in the United States by year (1920–2014)

There are about 18,000 U.S. police agencies from local to federal level in the United States.[309] Law in the United States is mainly enforced by local police departments and sheriff's offices. The state police provides broader services, and federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties, such as protecting civil rights, national security and enforcing U.S. federal courts' rulings and federal laws.[310] State courts conduct most civil and criminal trials,[311] and federal courts handle designated crimes and appeals from the state criminal courts.[312]

As of 2020, the United States has an intentional homicide rate of 7 per 100,000 people.[313] A cross-sectional analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database from 2010 showed that United States homicide rates "were 7.0 times higher than in other high-income countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25.2 times higher."[314]

As of 2023, the United States has the sixth highest documented incarceration rate and second largest prison population in the world.[315] In 2019, the total prison population for those sentenced to more than a year is 1,430,800, corresponding to a ratio of 419 per 100,000 residents and the lowest since 1995.[316] Some estimates place that number higher, such Prison Policy Initiative's 2.3 million.[317] Various states have attempted to reduce their prison populations via government policies and grassroots initiatives.[318]

Although most nations have abolished capital punishment,[319] it is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and in 27 states out of 50 and in one territory.[320] Several of these states have moratoriums on carrying out the penalty, each imposed by the state's governor.[321][322][323] Since 1977, there have been more than 1,500 executions,[324] giving the U.S. the sixth-highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt.[325] However, the number is trended down nationally, with several states recently abolishing the penalty.[326]

Economy

 
The U.S. dollar (featuring George Washington) is the currency most used in international transactions and is the world's foremost reserve currency.[327]
 
The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies[328]

According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) of $22.7 trillion constitutes 24% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 16% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity (PPP).[329][13] From 1983 to 2008, U.S. real compounded annual GDP growth was 3.3%, compared to a 2.3% weighted average for the rest of the G7.[330] The country ranks fifth in the world in nominal GDP per capita[331] and seventh in GDP per capita at PPP.[13] The country has been the world's largest economy since at least 1900.[332]

The United States is at or near the forefront of technological advancement and innovation[333] in many economic sectors, especially in artificial intelligence, computers, pharmaceuticals, and medical, aerospace, and military equipment.[334] The nation's economy is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity.[335] It has the second-highest total-estimated value of natural resources, valued at US$44.98 trillion in 2019, although sources differ on their estimates. Americans have the highest average household and employee income among OECD member states.[336] In 2013, they had the sixth-highest median household income, down from fourth-highest in 2010.[337][338]

The U.S. dollar is the currency most used in international transactions and is the world's foremost reserve currency, backed by the country's economy, its military, the petrodollar system and its linked eurodollar and large U.S. treasuries market.[327] Several countries use it as their official currency and in others it is the de facto currency.[339][340] The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are the world's largest stock exchanges by market capitalization and trade volume.[341][342]

The largest U.S. trading partners are China, the European Union, Canada, Mexico, India, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan.[343] The U.S. is the world's largest importer and the second-largest exporter.[344] It has free trade agreements with several countries, including the USMCA.[345] The U.S. ranked second in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2019, after Singapore.[346] Of the world's 500 largest companies, 124 are headquartered in the U.S.[347]

While its economy has reached a post-industrial level of development, the United States remains an industrial power.[348] It has a smaller welfare state and redistributes less income through government action than most other high-income countries.[349] The United States ranked the 41st highest in income inequality among 156 countries in 2017,[350] and the highest compared to the rest of the developed world.[351][352] As of January 1, 2023, the United States had a national debt of $31.4 trillion,[353] the largest of any country.

Income and poverty

 
CBO chart featuring U.S. family wealth between 1989 and 2013. The top 10% of families held 76% of the wealth in 2013 while the bottom 50% of families held 1%. Inequality increased from 1989 to 2013.[354]

At $46,625 USD in 2021, American citizens have the highest median income in the world.[355] Despite the fact that they only account for 4.24% of the global population, they collectively possess 30.2% of the world's total wealth as of 2021, the largest percentage of any country.[356] The U.S. also ranks first in the number of dollar billionaires and millionaires in the world, with 724 billionaires (as of 2021)[357] and nearly 22 million millionaires (2021).[358]

Wealth in the United States is highly concentrated; the richest 10% of the adult population own 72% of the country's household wealth, while the bottom 50% own just 2%.[359] Income inequality in the U.S. remains at record highs,[360] with the top fifth of earners taking home more than half of all income[361] and giving the U.S. one of the widest income distributions among OECD members.[362] The United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation[363] and is one of a few countries in the world without paid family leave as a legal right.[364] The United States also has a higher percentage of low-income workers than almost any other developed nation, largely because of a weak collective bargaining system and lack of government support for at-risk workers.[365]

There were about 567,715 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons in the U.S. in January 2019, with almost two-thirds staying in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program.[366] Attempts to combat homelessness include the Section 8 housing voucher program and implementation of the Housing First strategy across all levels of government.[367]

In 2011, 16.7 million children lived in food-insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels, though only 845,000 U.S. children (1.1%) saw reduced food intake or disrupted eating patterns at some point during the year, and most cases were not chronic.[368] As of June 2018, 40 million people, roughly 12.7% of the U.S. population, were living in poverty, including 13.3 million children. Of those impoverished, 18.5 million live in "deep poverty", family income below one-half of the federal government's poverty threshold.[352]

Science, technology, and energy

 
U.S. astronaut Buzz Aldrin saluting the flag on the Moon during the Apollo 11, 1969. The United States is the only country that has sent manned missions to the lunar surface.

The United States has been a leader in technological innovation since the late 19th century and scientific research since the mid-20th century. Methods for producing interchangeable parts and the establishment of a machine tool industry enabled the U.S. to have large-scale manufacturing of sewing machines, bicycles, and other items in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, factory electrification, the introduction of the assembly line, and other labor-saving techniques created the system of mass production.[369] In the 21st century, approximately two-thirds of research and development funding comes from the private sector.[370] In 2020, the United States was the country with the second-highest number of published scientific papers[371] and second most patents granted,[372] both after China. In 2021, the United States launched a total of 51 spaceflights. (China reported 55.)[373] The U.S. had 2,944 active satellites in space in December 2021, the highest number of any country.[374]

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. Thomas Edison's research laboratory developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera.[375] The Wright brothers in 1903 made the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight, and the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford popularized the assembly line in the early 20th century.[376] The rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1920s and 30s led many European scientists, such as Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and John von Neumann, to immigrate to the United States.[377] During World War II, the Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age. During the Cold War, competition for superior missile capability ushered in the Space Race between the U.S. and Soviet Union.[378][379] The invention of the transistor in the 1950s, a key component in almost all modern electronics, led to the development of microprocessors, software, personal computers and the Internet.[380] In 2022, the United States ranked 2nd in the Global Innovation Index.[381]

As of 2019, the United States receives approximately 80% of its energy from fossil fuels.[382] In 2019, the largest source of the country's energy came from petroleum (36.6%), followed by natural gas (32%), coal (11.4%), renewable sources (11.4%) and nuclear power (8.4%).[382] Americans constitute less than 5% of the world's population, but consume 17% of the world's energy.[383] They account for about 25% of the world's petroleum consumption, while producing only 6% of the world's annual petroleum supply.[384] The U.S. ranks as second-highest emitter of greenhouse gases, exceeded only by China.[385]

Transportation

The United States's rail network, nearly all standard gauge, is the longest in the world, and exceeds 293,564 km (182,400 mi).[386] It handles mostly freight, with intercity passenger service provided by Amtrak to all but four states.[387] The country's inland waterways are the world's fifth-longest, and total 41,009 km (25,482 mi).[388]

Personal transportation is dominated by automobiles, which operate on a network of 4 million miles (6.4 million kilometers) of public roads.[389] The United States has the world's second-largest automobile market,[390] and has the highest vehicle ownership per capita in the world, with 816.4 vehicles per 1,000 Americans (2014).[391] In 2017, there were 255 million non-two wheel motor vehicles, or about 910 vehicles per 1,000 people.[392]

The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely deregulated since 1978, while most major airports are publicly owned.[393] The three largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are U.S.-based; American Airlines is number one after its 2013 acquisition by US Airways.[394] Of the world's 50 busiest passenger airports, 16 are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.[395] Of the fifty busiest container ports, four are located in the United States, of which the busiest is the Port of Los Angeles.[396]

Demographics

Population

Historical population
CensusPop.Note
17903,929,326
18005,308,48335.1%
18107,239,88136.4%
18209,638,45333.1%
183012,866,02033.5%
184017,069,45332.7%
185023,191,87635.9%
186031,443,32135.6%
187038,925,59823.8%
188050,189,20928.9%
189062,979,76625.5%
190076,212,16821.0%
191092,228,49621.0%
1920106,021,53715.0%
1930122,775,04615.8%
1940132,164,5697.6%
1950150,697,36114.0%
1960179,323,17519.0%
1970203,392,03113.4%
1980226,545,80511.4%
1990248,709,8739.8%
2000281,421,90613.2%
2010308,745,5389.7%
2020331,449,2817.4%
U.S. Decennial Census

The U.S. Census Bureau reported 331,449,281 residents as of April 1, 2020,[m][397] making the United States the third most populous nation in the world, after China and India.[398] According to the Bureau's U.S. Population Clock, on January 28, 2021, the U.S. population had a net gain of one person every 100 seconds, or about 864 people per day.[399] In 2018, 52% of Americans age 15 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 32% had never been married.[400] In 2020, the U.S. had a total fertility rate stood at 1.64 children per woman[401] and the world's highest rate (23%) of children living in single-parent households.[402]

The United States of America has a diverse population; 37 ancestry groups have more than one million members.[403] White Americans with ancestry from Europe, the Middle East or North Africa, form the largest racial and ethnic group at 57.8% of the United States population.[404][405] Hispanic and Latino Americans form the second-largest group and are 18.7% of the United States population. African Americans constitute the nation's third-largest ancestry group and are 12.1% of the total United States population.[403] Asian Americans are the country's fourth-largest group, composing 5.9% of the United States population, while the country's 3.7 million Native Americans account for about 1%.[403] In 2020, the median age of the United States population was 38.5 years.[398]

In 2018, there were almost 90 million immigrants and U.S.-born children of immigrants in the United States, accounting for 28% of the overall U.S. population.[406] In 2017, out of the U.S. foreign-born population, some 45% (20.7 million) were naturalized citizens, 27% (12.3 million) were lawful permanent residents, 6% (2.2 million) were temporary lawful residents, and 23% (10.5 million) were unauthorized immigrants.[407] The United States led the world in refugee resettlement for decades, admitting more refugees than the rest of the world combined.[408]

Language

English (specifically, American English) is the de facto national language of the United States. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English, and most states have declared English as the official language.[409] Three states and four U.S. territories have recognized local or indigenous languages in addition to English, including Hawaii (Hawaiian),[410] Alaska (twenty Native languages),[n][411] South Dakota (Sioux),[412] American Samoa (Samoan), Puerto Rico (Spanish), Guam (Chamorro), and the Northern Mariana Islands (Carolinian and Chamorro). In Puerto Rico, Spanish is more widely spoken than English.[413]

According to the American Community Survey, in 2010 some 229 million people (out of the total U.S. population of 308 million) spoke only English at home. More than 37 million spoke Spanish at home, making it the second most commonly used language in the United States. Other languages spoken at home by one million people or more include Chinese (2.8 million), Tagalog (1.6 million), Vietnamese (1.4 million), French (1.3 million), Korean (1.1 million), and German (1 million).[414]

The most widely taught foreign languages in the United States, in terms of enrollment numbers from kindergarten through university undergraduate education, are Spanish (around 7.2 million students), French (1.5 million), and German (500,000). Other commonly taught languages include Latin, Japanese, American Sign Language, Italian, and Chinese.[415][416]

Religion

Religion in the United States (2022 Pew Research Center)[417]

  Protestant (40%)
  Catholic (21%)
  Mormonism (2%)
  Orthodox (1%)
  Unaffiliated (29%)
  Jewish (2%)
  Muslim (1%)
  Hindu (1%)
  Buddhist (1%)
  Unknown/Refused/Other (3%)

A large variety of faiths have historically flourished within the country. According to the World Values Survey in 2017, the United States is more secular than the median country; they ranked the United States the 32nd least religious country in the world.[418] Until the 1990s, the country was a substantial outlier among other highly developed countries: uniquely combining a high level of religiosity and wealth, although this has lessened significantly since then.[418][419][420][421] Gallup polls during the early 2020s found that about 81% of Americans believe in some conception of God, 45% report praying on a daily basis, 41% report that religion plays a very important role in their lives, and 31% report attending religious services weekly or near weekly.[422][423][424] According to Gallup in December 2022, 58% of Americans report "seldom" or "never" attending religious services.[424] According to the Institute for Family Studies in 2022, around 28% of Americans attended at least once or twice a month.[425]

In a 2020 survey, about 64% of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians making it the country with the largest Christian population.[426] Protestantism is the largest Christian religious grouping in the United States, accounting for around a third of all Americans. In the so-called Bible Belt, located primarily within the Southern United States, socially conservative evangelical Protestantism plays a significant role culturally. By contrast, religion plays the least important role in New England and the Western United States.[427]

Another 6% claimed a non-Christian faith;[419] the largest of which are Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.[428]

Around 30% of Americans describe themselves as having no religion.[419] Membership in a house of worship fell from 70% in 1999 to 47% in 2020, much of the decline related to the number of Americans expressing no religious preference. Membership also fell among those who identified with a specific religious group.[429][430] According to Gallup, trust in "the church or organized religion" has declined significantly since the 1970s.[431]

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its establishment.[432]

Urbanization

About 82% of Americans live in urban areas, including suburbs;[204] about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000.[433] In 2008, 273 incorporated municipalities had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than one million residents, and four cities (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston) had populations exceeding two million.[434] Many U.S. metropolitan populations are growing rapidly, particularly in the South and West.[435]

 
Largest metropolitan areas in the United States
Rank Name Region Pop. Rank Name Region Pop.
 
New York
 
Los Angeles
1 New York Northeast 19,768,458 11 Boston Northeast 4,899,932
2 Los Angeles West 12,997,353 12 Riverside–San Bernardino West 4,653,105
3 Chicago Midwest 9,509,934 13 San Francisco West 4,623,264
4 Dallas–Fort Worth South 7,759,615 14 Detroit Midwest 4,365,205
5 Houston South 7,206,841 15 Seattle West 4,011,553
6 Washington, D.C. South 6,356,434 16 Minneapolis–Saint Paul Midwest 3,690,512
7 Philadelphia Northeast 6,228,601 17 San Diego West 3,286,069
8 Atlanta South 6,144,050 18 Tampa–St. Petersburg South 3,219,514
9 Miami South 6,091,747 19 Denver West 2,972,566
10 Phoenix West 4,946,145 20 Baltimore South 2,838,327

Education

 
The University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, is one of the many public colleges and universities in the United States.

American public education is operated by state and local governments and regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. In most states, children are required to attend school from the age of five or six (beginning with kindergarten or first grade) until they turn 18 (generally bringing them through twelfth grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at 16 or 17.[436] Of Americans 25 and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees.[437] The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.[204][438]

The United States has many private and public institutions of higher education. The majority of the world's top public and private universities (namely, research universities), as listed by various ranking organizations, are in the United States.[439] There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition.[440] The U.S. spends more on education per student than any nation in the world,[441] spending an average of $12,794 per year on public elementary and secondary school students in the 2016–2017 school year.[442] As for public expenditures on higher education, the U.S. spends more per student than the OECD average, and more than all nations in combined public and private spending.[443] Despite some student loan forgiveness programs in place,[444] student loan debt has increased by 102% in the last decade,[445] and exceeded 1.7 trillion dollars as of 2022.[446]

Health

 
The Texas Medical Center in downtown Houston is the largest medical complex in the world.[447]

In a preliminary report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that U.S. life expectancy at birth had dropped to 76.4 years in 2021 (73.2 years for men and 79.1 years for women), down 0.9 years from 2020. This was the second year of overall decline, and the chief causes listed were the COVID-19 pandemic, accidents, drug overdoses, heart and liver disease, and suicides.[448][449] Life expectancy was highest among Asians and Hispanics and lowest among Blacks and American Indian–Alaskan Native (AIAN) peoples.[450][451] Starting in 1998, the average life expectancy in the U.S. fell behind that of other wealthy industrialized countries, and Americans' "health disadvantage" gap has been increasing ever since.[452] The U.S. also has one of the highest suicide rates among high-income countries,[453] and approximately one-third of the U.S. adult population is obese and another third is overweight.[454]

In 2010, coronary artery disease, lung cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and traffic collisions caused the most years of life lost in the U.S. Low back pain, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, neck pain, and anxiety caused the most years lost to disability. The most harmful risk factors were poor diet, tobacco smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, physical inactivity, and alcohol consumption. Alzheimer's disease, substance use disorders, kidney disease, cancer, and falls caused the most additional years of life lost over their age-adjusted 1990 per-capita rates.[455] Teenage pregnancy and abortion rates in the U.S. are substantially higher than in other Western nations, especially among blacks and Hispanics.[456]

The U.S. health care system far outspends that of any other nation, measured both in per capita spending and as a percentage of GDP but attains worse health care outcomes when compared to peer nations.[457] The United States is the only developed nation without a system of universal health care, and a significant proportion of the population that does not carry health insurance.[458] The U.S., however, is a global leader in medical innovation, measured either in terms of revenue or the number of new drugs and devices introduced.[459][460]

Government-funded health care coverage for the poor (Medicaid, established in 1965) and for those age 65 and older (Medicare, begun in 1966) is available to Americans who meet the programs' income or age qualifications. In 2010, former President Obama passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or ACA,[o][461] which the CDC said that the law roughly halved the uninsured share of the population[462] and multiple studies have concluded that ACA had reduced the mortality of enrollees.[463][464][465] However, its legacy remains controversial.[466]

Culture and society

 
The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World), a gift from France, has become an iconic symbol of the American Dream.[467]

Americans have traditionally been characterized by a strong work ethic,[468] competitiveness,[469] and individualism,[470] as well as a unifying belief in an "American creed" emphasizing liberty, social equality, property rights, democracy, equality under the law, and a preference for limited government.[471] Americans are extremely charitable by global standards: according to a 2016 study by the Charities Aid Foundation, Americans donated 1.44% of total GDP to charity, the highest in the world by a large margin.[472] The United States is home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values,[473][474] and exerts major cultural influence on a global scale.[475][476] The country has been described as a society "built on a universalistic cultural frame rooted in the natural laws of science and human rights."[477]

The Declaration of Independence has become a well-known statement on human rights, particularly its second sentence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Stephen Lucas called it "one of the best-known sentences in the English language",[478] with historian Joseph Ellis writing that the document contains "the most potent and consequential words in American history".[479] The passage has since came to represent a moral standard to which the United States should strive. This view was notably promoted by Lincoln, who considered it to be the foundation of his political philosophy and argued that it is a statement of principles through which the Constitution should be interpreted.[480]: 126 

Aside from the Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Native Alaskan populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated or were imported as slaves within the past five centuries.[481] Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa.[473][482] More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as a homogenizing melting pot, and a heterogeneous salad bowl, with immigrants contributing to, and often assimilating into, mainstream American culture.[473] Nevertheless, there is a high degree of social inequality related to race[483] and wealth.[484] The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants.[485] Whether this perception is accurate has been a topic of debate.[486][487][488] While mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society,[489] scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values.[490] Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomic achievement, but being ordinary or average is promoted by some as a noble condition.[491]

The United States has been considered to have the strongest protections of free speech of any country in the world under the First Amendment,[492] with the Supreme Court ruling that flag desecration, hate speech, blasphemy, and lese-majesty are all forms of protected expression.[493][494][495] A 2016 Pew Research Center poll found that Americans were the most supportive of free expression of any polity measured.[496] They were also found to be the "most supportive of freedom of the press and the right to use the internet without government censorship."[497] It is a socially progressive country[498] with permissive attitudes surrounding human sexuality.[499] LGBT rights are among the most advanced in the world,[500][499] with public opinion and jurisprudence on the issue changing significantly since the late 1980s.[501] A late 2022 Grinnell College poll found that 74% of Americans agreed that same-sex marriage should be a guaranteed right while 13% disagreed.[502][503] Approval of same-sex marriage is higher in younger generations;[504] among 18-34 year olds, 76% are in favor of legal recognition and 7% oppose.[505] In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage bans were unconstitutional.[506]

Literature and visual arts

 
Mark Twain, American author and humorist

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American art and literature took most of their cues from Europe, contributing to Western culture. Writers such as Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the 19th century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is recognized as an essential American poet.[507]

A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel."[508]

Thirteen U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck are often named among the most influential writers of the 20th century.[509] The Beat Generation writers opened up new literary approaches, as have postmodernist authors such as John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo.[510]

In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene.[511] Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new, individualistic styles.

Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has brought fame to American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry.[512] Americans have long been important in the modern artistic medium of photography, with major photographers including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams.[513]

Cinema and theater

 
The Hollywood Sign in Los Angeles, California

Hollywood, a northern district of Los Angeles, California, is the leader in motion picture production and the most recognizable movie industry in the world.[514][515][516] The major film studios of the United States are the primary source of the most commercially successful and most ticket selling movies in the world.[517][518]

The world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City in 1894, using the Kinetoscope.[519] Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, although in the 21st century an increasing number of films are not made there, and film companies have been subject to the forces of globalization.[520] The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, have been held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929,[521] and the Golden Globe Awards have been held annually since January 1944.[522]

Director D. W. Griffith, an American filmmaker during the silent film period, was central to the development of film grammar, and producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising.[523] Directors such as John Ford redefined the image of the American Old West, and, like others such as John Huston, broadened the possibilities of cinema with location shooting. The industry enjoyed its golden years, in what is commonly referred to as the "Golden Age of Hollywood", from the early sound period until the early 1960s,[524] with screen actors such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe becoming iconic figures.[525][526] In the 1970s, "New Hollywood" or the "Hollywood Renaissance"[527] was defined by grittier films influenced by French and Italian realist pictures of the post-war period.[528]

Theater in the United States derives from the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the British theater.[529] The central hub of the American theater scene has been Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway.[530] Many movie and television stars have gotten their big break working in New York productions. Outside New York City, many cities have professional regional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons, with some works being produced regionally with hopes of eventually moving to New York. The biggest-budget theatrical productions are musicals. U.S. theater also has an active community theater culture, which relies mainly on local volunteers who may not be actively pursuing a theatrical career.[531]

Music

American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, Mainland Europe, or Africa.[532]

Among America's earliest composers was a man named William Billings who, born in Boston, composed patriotic hymns in the 1770s;[533] Billings was a part of the First New England School, who dominated American music during its earliest stages. Anthony Heinrich was the most prominent composer before the Civil War. From the mid- to late 1800s, John Philip Sousa of the late Romantic era composed numerous military songs—particularly marches—and is regarded as one of America's greatest composers.[534]

The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African-American music have significantly influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European and African traditions. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is known as old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz was developed by innovators such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington early in the 20th century. Country music developed in the 1920s, and rhythm and blues in the 1940s.[535]

Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry were among the pioneers of rock and roll in the mid-1950s. Rock bands such as Metallica, the Eagles, and Aerosmith are among the highest grossing in worldwide sales.[536][537][538] In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of America's most celebrated songwriters.[539] Mid-20th-century American pop stars such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra,[540] and Elvis Presley became global celebrities,[535] as have artists of the late 20th century such as Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey.[541][542]

Mass media

 

The four major broadcasters in the U.S. are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and Fox Broadcasting Company (FOX). The four major broadcast television networks are all commercial entities. Cable television offers hundreds of channels catering to a variety of niches.[544] As of 2021, about 83% of Americans over age 12 listen to broadcast radio, while about 41% listen to podcasts.[545] As of September 30, 2014, there are 15,433 licensed full-power radio stations in the U.S. according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).[546] Much of the public radio broadcasting is supplied by NPR, incorporated in February 1970 under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.[547]

Well-known U.S. newspapers include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today.[548] More than 800 publications are produced in Spanish, the second most commonly used language in the United States behind English.[549][550] With very few exceptions, all the newspapers in the U.S. are privately owned, either by large chains such as Gannett or McClatchy, which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers; by small chains that own a handful of papers; or, in a situation that is increasingly rare, by individuals or families. Major cities often have alternative newspapers to complement the mainstream daily papers, such as New York City's The Village Voice or Los Angeles' LA Weekly. The five most popular websites used in the U.S. are Google, YouTube, Amazon, Yahoo, and Facebook.[551]

The American video game industry is the world's 2nd largest by revenue.[552] It generated $90 billion in annual economic output in 2020. Furthermore, the video game industry contributed $12.6 billion in federal, state, and municipal taxes annually.[553] Some of the largest video game companies like Activision Blizzard, Xbox, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Rockstar Games, and Electronic Arts are based in the United States.[554] Some of the most popular and best selling video games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Diablo III are made by American developers.[555] The American video gaming business is still a significant employer. More than 143,000 individuals are employed directly and indirectly by video game companies throughout 50 states. The national compensation for direct workers is $2.9 billion, or an average wage of $121,000.[556]

Food

 
Roasted turkey is a traditional Thanksgiving dinner dish and is usually the main entree.[557]

Early settlers were introduced by Native Americans to such indigenous, non-European foods as turkey, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup. They and later immigrants combined these with foods they had known, such as wheat flour,[558] beef, and milk to create a distinctive American cuisine.[559][560] Homegrown foods are part of a shared national menu on one of America's most popular holidays, Thanksgiving, when many Americans make or purchase traditional foods to celebrate the occasion.[561]

The American fast food industry, the world's largest,[562] pioneered the drive-through format in the 1940s.[563] Characteristic American dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, doughnuts, french fries, macaroni and cheese, ice cream, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various immigrants.[564][565] Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed.[566]

Americans drink three times as much coffee as tea.[567] Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk standard breakfast beverages.[568][569]

Sports

 
American football is the most popular sport in the United States.

The most popular sports in the U.S. are American football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey.[570]

While most major U.S. sports such as baseball and American football have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, and snowboarding are American inventions, some of which have become popular worldwide.[571] Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate European contact.[572] The market for professional sports in the United States is roughly $69 billion, roughly 50% larger than that of all of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined.[573]

American football is by several measures the most popular spectator sport in the United States;[574] the National Football League (NFL) has the highest average attendance of any sports league in the world, and the Super Bowl is watched by tens of millions globally.[575] Baseball has been regarded as the U.S. national sport since the late 19th century, with Major League Baseball being the top league. Basketball and ice hockey are the country's next two most popular professional team sports, with the top leagues being the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League. The most-watched individual sports in the U.S. are golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR and IndyCar.[576][577]

Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, were the first-ever Olympic Games held outside of Europe.[578] The Olympic Games will be held in the U.S. for a ninth time when Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics. As of 2021, the United States has won 2,629 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country, and 330 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most behind Norway.[579] In soccer, the men's national soccer team qualified for eleven World Cups and the women's team has won the FIFA Women's World Cup four times.[580] The United States hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup and will host the 2026 FIFA World Cup along with Canada and Mexico. On the collegiate level, earnings for the member institutions exceed $1 billion annually,[581] and college football and basketball attract large audiences, as the NCAA Final Four is one of the most watched sporting events.[582]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The historical and informal demonym Yankee has been applied to Americans, New Englanders, or northeasterners since the 18th century.
  2. ^ a b c At 3,531,900 sq mi (9,147,590 km2), the United States is the third-largest country in the world by land area, behind Russia and China. By total area (land and water), it is the third-largest behind Russia and Canada, if its coastal and territorial water areas are included. However, if only its internal waters are included (bays, sounds, rivers, lakes, and the Great Lakes), the U.S. is the fourth-largest, after Russia, Canada, and China.

    Coastal/territorial waters included: 3,796,742 sq mi (9,833,517 km2)[17]
    Only internal waters included: 3,696,100 sq mi (9,572,900 km2)[18]
  3. ^ Excludes Puerto Rico and the other unincorporated islands because they are counted separately in U.S. census statistics.
  4. ^ See Time in the United States for details about laws governing time zones in the United States.
  5. ^ See Date and time notation in the United States.
  6. ^ A single jurisdiction, the U.S. Virgin Islands, uses left-hand traffic.
  7. ^ The five major territories are American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. There are eleven smaller island areas without permanent populations: Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, and Palmyra Atoll. U.S. sovereignty over Bajo Nuevo Bank, Navassa Island, Serranilla Bank, and Wake Island is disputed.[16]
  8. ^ The United States has a maritime border with the British Virgin Islands, a British territory, since the BVI borders the U.S. Virgin Islands.[19] BVI is a British Overseas Territory but itself is not a part of the United Kingdom.[20] Puerto Rico has a maritime border with the Dominican Republic.[21] American Samoa has a maritime border with the Cook Islands, maintained under the Cook Islands–United States Maritime Boundary Treaty.[22][23] American Samoa also has maritime borders with independent Samoa and Niue.[24]
  9. ^ The U.S. Census Bureau provides a continuously updated but unofficial population clock in addition to its decennial census and annual population estimates: [1]
  10. ^ New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia
  11. ^ John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston
  12. ^ People born in American Samoa are non-citizen U.S. nationals unless one of their parents is a U.S. citizen.[263] In 2019, a court ruled that American Samoans are U.S. citizens, but the litigation is ongoing.[264][265]
  13. ^ This figure, like most official data for the United States as a whole, excludes the five unincorporated territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands) and minor island possessions.
  14. ^ Inupiaq, Siberian Yupik, Central Alaskan Yup'ik, Alutiiq, Unanga (Aleut), Denaʼina, Deg Xinag, Holikachuk, Koyukon, Upper Kuskokwim, Gwichʼin, Tanana, Upper Tanana, Tanacross, Hän, Ahtna, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian
  15. ^ Also known less formally as Obamacare

References

  1. ^ 36 U.S.C. § 302
  2. ^ "The Great Seal of the United States" (PDF). U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs. 2003. Retrieved February 12, 2020.
  3. ^ "An Act To make The Star-Spangled Banner the national anthem of the United States of America". H.R. 14, Act of March 3, 1931. 71st United States Congress.
  4. ^ "2020 Census Illuminates Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Country". United States Census. Retrieved August 13, 2021.
  5. ^ "Race and Ethnicity in the United States: 2010 Census and 2020 Census". United States Census. Retrieved August 13, 2021.
  6. ^ "A Breakdown of 2020 Census Demographic Data". NPR. August 13, 2021.
  7. ^ "About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated". Measuring Religion in Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel. Pew Research Center. December 14, 2021. Retrieved December 21, 2021.
  8. ^ Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia and Fact-index: Ohio. 1963. p. 336.
  9. ^ Areas of the 50 states and the District of Columbia but not Puerto Rico nor other island territories per "State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates". Census.gov. August 2010. Retrieved March 31, 2020. reflect base feature updates made in the MAF/TIGER database through August, 2010.
  10. ^ "Surface water and surface water change". Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2015. Retrieved October 11, 2020.
  11. ^ Bureau, US Census. "Growth in U.S. Population Shows Early Indication of Recovery Amid COVID-19 Pandemic". Census.gov. Retrieved December 24, 2022.
  12. ^ "Census Bureau's 2020 Population Count". United States Census. Retrieved April 26, 2021. The 2020 census is as of April 1, 2020.
  13. ^ a b c d e f "World Economic Outlook Database, October 2022". IMF.org. International Monetary Fund. October 2022. Retrieved October 11, 2022.
  14. ^ Bureau, US Census. "Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020, Table A-3". Census.gov. Retrieved July 26, 2022.
  15. ^ "Human Development Report 2021/2022" (PDF). United Nations Development Programme. September 8, 2022. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  16. ^ U.S. State Department, Common Core Document to U.N. Committee on Human Rights, December 30, 2011, Item 22, 27, 80. And U.S. General Accounting Office Report, U.S. Insular Areas: application of the U.S. Constitution November 3, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, November 1997, pp. 1, 6, 39n. Both viewed April 6, 2016.
  17. ^ "China". CIA World Factbook. Retrieved June 10, 2016.
  18. ^ . Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on December 19, 2013. Retrieved January 31, 2010.
  19. ^ . Encyclopædia Britannica (Online ed.). Archived from the original on April 29, 2020. Retrieved July 3, 2020. [...]which also contains its near neighbour, the British Virgin Islands.
  20. ^ "United Kingdom Overseas Territories - Toponymic Information" (PDF). Present Committee on Geographic Names. Retrieved January 7, 2023. - Hosted on the Government of the United Kingdom website.
  21. ^ . Encyclopædia Britannica (Online ed.). Archived from the original on July 2, 2020. Retrieved July 3, 2020.
  22. ^ Anderson, Ewan W. (2003). International Boundaries: A Geopolitical Atlas. Routledge: New York. ISBN 9781579583750; OCLC 54061586
  23. ^ Charney, Jonathan I., David A. Colson, Robert W. Smith. (2005). International Maritime Boundaries, 5 vols. Hotei Publishing: Leiden.
  24. ^ . pacgeo.org. Archived from the original on July 31, 2020. Retrieved July 3, 2020.
  25. ^ Sider 2007, p. 226.
  26. ^ Szalay, Jessie (September 20, 2017). "Amerigo Vespucci: Facts, Biography & Naming of America". Live Science. Retrieved June 23, 2019.
  27. ^ Jonathan Cohen. . Archived from the original on October 6, 2018. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
  28. ^ DeLear, Byron (July 4, 2013) Who coined 'United States of America'? Mystery might have intriguing answer. "Historians have long tried to pinpoint exactly when the name 'United States of America' was first used and by whom ... This latest find comes in a letter that Stephen Moylan, Esq., wrote to Col. Joseph Reed from the Continental Army Headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., during the siege of Boston. The two men lived with Washington in Cambridge, with Reed serving as Washington's favorite military secretary and Moylan fulfilling the role during Reed's absence." Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA).
  29. ^ Touba, Mariam (November 5, 2014) Who Coined the Phrase 'United States of America'? You May Never Guess "Here, on January 2, 1776, seven months before the Declaration of Independence and a week before the publication of Paine's Common Sense, Stephen Moylan, an acting secretary to General George Washington, spells it out, 'I should like vastly to go with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain' to seek foreign assistance for the cause." New-York Historical Society Museum & Library
  30. ^ Fay, John (July 15, 2016) The forgotten Irishman who named the 'United States of America' "According to the NY Historical Society, Stephen Moylan was the man responsible for the earliest documented use of the phrase 'United States of America'. But who was Stephen Moylan?" IrishCentral.com
  31. ^ . The Virginia Gazette. Vol. 5, no. 1287. Archived from the original on December 19, 2014.
  32. ^ a b c Safire 2003, p. 199.
  33. ^ Mostert 2005, p. 18.
  34. ^ Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993). The Columbia guide to standard American English. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 27–28. ISBN 978-0-231-06989-2.
  35. ^ Erlandson, Rick & Vellanoweth 2008, p. 19.
  36. ^ Savage 2011, p. 55.
  37. ^ Haviland, Walrath & Prins 2013, p. 219.
  38. ^ Waters & Stafford 2007, pp. 1122–1126.
  39. ^ Flannery 2015, pp. 173–185.
  40. ^ Gelo 2018, pp. 79–80.
  41. ^ Lockard 2010, p. 315.
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united, states, several, terms, redirect, here, other, uses, america, disambiguation, disambiguation, disambiguation, america, disambiguation, disambiguation, america, commonly, known, america, country, primarily, located, north, america, consists, states, fed. Several terms redirect here For other uses see America disambiguation US disambiguation USA disambiguation The United States of America disambiguation and United States disambiguation The United States of America U S A or USA commonly known as the United States U S or US or America is a country primarily located in North America It consists of 50 states a federal district five major unincorporated territories nine Minor Outlying Islands g and 326 Indian reservations The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states the Federated States of Micronesia the Marshall Islands and the Republic of Palau It is the world s third largest country by both land and total area b It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas Cuba Russia and other nations h With a population of over 333 million i it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world The national capital of the United States is Washington D C and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City United States of AmericaFlag Coat of armsMotto In God We Trust 1 Other traditional mottos 2 E pluribus unum Latin Out of many one Annuit cœptis Latin Providence favors our undertakings Novus ordo seclorum Latin New order of the ages Anthem The Star Spangled Banner 3 source source track track track track track track track track track track track track track track track track track track track track track track track track track Show globe states and D C only Show the U S and its territoriesCapitalWashington D C 38 53 N 77 01 W 38 883 N 77 017 W 38 883 77 017Largest cityNew York City40 43 N 74 00 W 40 717 N 74 000 W 40 717 74 000National languageEnglish de facto Ethnic groups 2020 4 5 6 By race 61 6 White 12 4 Black 6 Asian 1 1 Native American 0 2 Pacific Islander 10 2 Multiracial 8 4 Others By Hispanic or Latino origin 81 3 Non Hispanic or Latino 18 7 Hispanic or LatinoReligion 2021 7 63 Christianity 40 Protestantism 21 Catholicism 2 Other Christian29 No religion6 Other2 UnansweredDemonym s American a 8 GovernmentFederal presidential constitutional republic PresidentJoe Biden Vice PresidentKamala Harris House SpeakerKevin McCarthy Chief JusticeJohn RobertsLegislatureCongress Upper houseSenate Lower houseHouse of RepresentativesIndependence from Great Britain DeclarationJuly 4 1776 1776 07 04 ConfederationMarch 1 1781 1781 03 01 Treaty of ParisSeptember 3 1783 1783 09 03 ConstitutionJune 21 1788 1788 06 21 Area Total area3 796 742 sq mi 9 833 520 km2 9 3rd b Water 4 66 10 2015 Land area3 531 905 sq mi 9 147 590 km2 3rd Population 2022 estimate333 287 557 11 2020 census331 449 281 c 12 3rd Density87 sq mi 33 6 km2 185th GDP PPP 2022 estimate Total 25 035 trillion 13 2nd Per capita 75 180 13 8th GDP nominal 2022 estimate Total 25 035 trillion 13 1st Per capita 75 180 13 7th Gini 2020 46 9 14 highHDI 2021 0 921 15 very high 21stCurrencyU S dollar USD Time zoneUTC 4 to 12 10 11 Summer DST UTC 4 to 10 d Date formatmm dd yyyy e Driving sideright f Calling code 1ISO 3166 codeUSInternet TLD usPaleo Americans migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12 000 years ago and are the ancestors of modern Native Americans Colonization by Europeans began in the 16th century Great Britain s Thirteen Colonies in what is now the eastern U S quarreled with the British Crown over taxation and political representation leading to the American Revolution 1765 1791 After the Revolution the United States gained independence the first nation state founded on Enlightenment principles of liberal democracy In the late 18th century the U S began expanding across North America gradually obtaining new territories sometimes through war frequently displacing Native Americans and admitting new states By 1848 the United States spanned the continent from east to west The controversy surrounding the practice of slavery culminated in the secession of the Confederate States of America which fought the remaining states of the Union during the American Civil War 1861 1865 With the Union s victory and preservation slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment By 1890 the United States had grown to become the world s largest economy and the Spanish American War and World War I established the country as a world power After Japan s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 the U S entered World War II on the Allied side The aftermath of the war left the United States and the Soviet Union as the world s two superpowers and led to the Cold War which commenced in 1945 and ended in 1991 with the Soviet Union s dissolution During the Cold War both countries engaged in a struggle for ideological dominance but avoided direct military conflict They also competed in the Space Race which culminated in the 1969 American spaceflight in which the U S was the first nation to land humans on the Moon Simultaneously the civil rights movement 1954 1968 led to legislation abolishing state and local Jim Crow laws and other codified racial discrimination against African Americans With the Soviet Union s dissolution in 1991 and the end of the Cold War the United States emerged as the world s sole superpower In 2001 following the September 11 attacks the United States became a lead member of the Global War on Terrorism which saw its involvement in the War in Afghanistan 2001 2021 and the Iraq War 2003 2011 The United States Government is a federal republic with three separate branches of government including a bicameral legislature It is a liberal democracy and has a market economy It ranks very high in international measures of quality of life income and wealth economic competitiveness human rights innovation and education it has low levels of perceived corruption The United States has the highest median income per person of any polity in the world although it has high levels of incarceration and inequality and lacks universal health care As a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities the U S has been shaped by centuries of immigration The United States is a highly developed country and its economy accounts for approximately a quarter of global GDP and is the world s largest by GDP at market exchange rates By value the United States is the world s largest importer and second largest exporter Although it accounts for just over 4 2 of the world s total population the U S holds over 30 of the total wealth in the world the largest share held by any country The United States is a founding member of the United Nations World Bank International Monetary Fund Organization of American States and NATO and is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council The country makes up more than a third of global military spending and is the foremost military power in the world and a leading political cultural and scientific force Contents 1 Etymology 2 History 2 1 Early history 2 2 Colonial America 2 3 American Revolution and the early federal republic 2 4 The Civil War and Reconstruction 2 5 Industrial Age and the Progressive Era 2 6 The rise to world power the New Deal and World War II 2 7 Cold War and late 20th century 2 8 21st century 3 Geography 3 1 Climate 3 2 Biodiversity and conservation 4 Government and politics 4 1 Federal government 4 2 Political subdivisions 4 3 Foreign relations 4 4 Military 4 5 Law enforcement and crime 5 Economy 5 1 Income and poverty 5 2 Science technology and energy 5 3 Transportation 6 Demographics 6 1 Population 6 2 Language 6 3 Religion 6 4 Urbanization 6 5 Education 6 6 Health 7 Culture and society 7 1 Literature and visual arts 7 2 Cinema and theater 7 3 Music 7 4 Mass media 7 5 Food 7 6 Sports 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External linksEtymologyFurther information Names of the United States Names for United States citizens Naming of the Americas Americas Terminology and American word The first known use of the name America dates to 1507 when it appeared on a world map produced by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller in Saint Die Lorraine now northeastern France On his map the name is shown in large letters on what would now be considered South America honoring Amerigo Vespucci The Italian explorer was the first to postulate that the West Indies did not represent Asia s eastern limit but were part of a previously unknown landmass 25 26 In 1538 the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator used the name America to refer to the entire Western Hemisphere 27 The first documentary evidence of the phrase United States of America dates back to a letter from January 2 1776 written by Stephen Moylan to Joseph Reed George Washington s aide de camp Moylan expressed his wish to go with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort 28 29 30 The first known publication of the phrase United States of America was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg on April 6 1776 31 The second draft of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union prepared by John Dickinson and completed no later than June 17 1776 declared The name of this Confederation shall be the United States of America 32 The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 stated that The Stile of this Confederacy shall be The United States of America 33 In June 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in the headline of his original Rough draught of the Declaration of Independence 32 This draft of the document did not surface until June 21 1776 and it is unclear whether it was written before or after Dickinson used the term in his June 17 draft of the Articles of Confederation 32 The phrase United States was originally plural in American usage It described a collection of states e g the United States are The singular form became popular after the end of the Civil War and is now standard usage A citizen of the United States is called an American United States American and U S refer to the country adjectivally American values U S forces In English the word American rarely refers to topics or subjects not directly connected with the United States 34 HistoryMain article History of the United States For a topical guide see Outline of United States history Early history Further information Native Americans in the United States Prehistory of the United States and Pre Columbian era Cliff Palace located in present day Colorado was built by the Ancestral Puebloans between AD 1190 and 1260 It is generally accepted that the first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 12 000 years ago however some evidence suggests an even earlier date of arrival 35 36 37 The Clovis culture which appeared around 11 000 BC is believed to represent the first wave of human settlement of the Americas 38 39 This was likely the first of three major waves of migration into North America later waves brought the ancestors of present day Athabaskans Aleuts and Eskimos 40 Over time indigenous cultures in North America grew increasingly sophisticated and some such as the pre Columbian Mississippian culture in the southeast developed advanced agriculture architecture and complex societies 41 The city state of Cahokia is the largest most complex pre Columbian archaeological site in the modern day United States 42 In the Four Corners region Ancestral Puebloan culture developed from centuries of agricultural experimentation 43 The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups This grouping consists of the peoples who speak Algonquian languages 44 Historically these peoples were prominent along the Atlantic Coast and into the interior along the Saint Lawrence River and around the Great Lakes Before Europeans came into contact most Algonquian settlements lived by hunting and fishing although many supplemented their diet by cultivating corn beans and squash the Three Sisters The Ojibwe cultivated wild rice 45 The Haudenosaunee confederation of the Iroquois located in the southern Great Lakes region was established at some point between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries 46 Estimating the native population of North America during European contact is difficult 47 48 Douglas H Ubelaker of the Smithsonian Institution estimated a population of 93 000 in the South Atlantic states and a population of 473 000 in the Gulf states 49 but most academics regard this figure as too low 47 Anthropologist Henry F Dobyns believed the populations were much higher suggesting around 1 1 million along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico 2 2 million people living between Florida and Massachusetts 5 2 million in the Mississippi Valley and tributaries and around 700 000 people in the Florida peninsula 47 48 Colonial America Further information Colonial history of the United States European colonization of the Americas and Slavery in the colonial history of the United States The Mayflower Compact signed on the Mayflower in 1620 set an early precedent for self government and constitutionalism Claims of very early colonization of coastal New England by the Norse are disputed and controversial 50 51 Christopher Columbus had landed in Puerto Rico on his 1493 voyage and San Juan was settled by the Spanish a decade later 52 The first documented arrival of Europeans in the continental United States is that of Spanish conquistadors such as Juan Ponce de Leon who made his first expedition to Florida in 1513 53 The Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sent by France to the New World in 1525 encountered Native American inhabitants of what is now called New York Bay 54 The Spanish set up the first settlements in Florida and New Mexico such as Saint Augustine often considered the nation s oldest city 55 and Santa Fe The French established their own settlements along the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico notably New Orleans and Mobile 56 Successful English settlement of the eastern coast of North America began with the Virginia Colony in 1607 at Jamestown and with the Pilgrims colony at Plymouth in 1620 57 58 The continent s first elected legislative assembly Virginia s House of Burgesses was founded in 1619 Harvard College was established in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 as the first institution of higher education The Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for representative self government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies 59 60 Many English settlers were dissenting Christians who came seeking religious freedom The native population of America declined after European arrival for various reasons 61 62 63 primarily from diseases such as smallpox and measles 64 65 The original Thirteen Colonies shown in red in 1775 In the early days of colonization many European settlers experienced food shortages disease and conflicts with Native Americans such as in King Philip s War Native Americans were also often fighting neighboring tribes and European settlers In many cases the natives and settlers came to depend on each other Settlers traded for food and animal pelts natives for guns tools and other European goods 66 American Indians taught many settlers to cultivate corn beans and other foodstuffs European missionaries and others felt it was important to civilize the Native Americans and urged them to adopt European agricultural practices and lifestyles 67 68 However with the increased European colonization of North America Native Americans were displaced and often killed during conflicts 69 European settlers also began trafficking African slaves into Colonial America via the transatlantic slave trade 70 By the turn of the 18th century slavery had supplanted indentured servitude as the main source of agricultural labor for the cash crops in the American South 71 Colonial society was divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery and several colonies passed acts for or against the practice 72 73 The Thirteen Colonies j that would become the United States of America were administered by the British as overseas dependencies 74 All nonetheless had local governments with elections open to white male property owners except Jews and Catholics in some areas 75 76 77 78 79 With very high birth rates low death rates and steady settlement the colonial population grew rapidly eclipsing Native American populations 80 The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest both in religion and in religious liberty 81 During the Seven Years War 1756 1763 known in the U S as the French and Indian War British forces captured Canada from the French With the creation of the Province of Quebec Canada s francophone population would remain isolated from the English speaking colonial dependencies of Nova Scotia Newfoundland and the Thirteen Colonies Excluding the Native Americans who lived there the Thirteen Colonies had a population of over 2 1 million in 1770 about a third that of Britain Despite continuing new arrivals the rate of natural increase was such that by the 1770s only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas 82 The colonies distance from Britain had allowed the development of self government but their unprecedented success motivated British monarchs to periodically seek to reassert royal authority 83 American Revolution and the early federal republic Main articles History of the United States 1776 1789 and 1789 1849 Further information American Revolution American Revolutionary War Territorial evolution of the United States and Slave states and free states Declaration of Independence a painting by John Trumbull depicts the Committee of Five k presenting the draft of the Declaration to the Continental Congress June 28 1776 in Philadelphia The American Revolution separated the Thirteen Colonies from the British Empire and was the first successful war of independence by a non European entity against a European power in modern history By the 18th century the American Enlightenment and the political philosophies of liberalism were pervasive among leaders Americans began to develop an ideology of republicanism asserting that government rested on the consent of the governed They demanded their rights as Englishmen and no taxation without representation 84 85 The British insisted on administering the colonies through a Parliament that did not have a single representative responsible for any American constituency and the conflict escalated into war 86 In 1774 the First Continental Congress passed the Continental Association which mandated a colonies wide boycott of British goods The American Revolutionary War began the following year catalyzed by events like the Stamp Act and the Boston Tea Party that were rooted in colonial disagreement with British governance 87 88 The Second Continental Congress an assembly representing the United Colonies unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4 1776 annually celebrated as Independence Day 89 In 1781 the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union established a decentralized government that operated until 1789 89 A celebrated early turn in the war for the Americans was George Washington leading the Americans to cross the frozen Delaware River in a surprise attack the night of December 25 26 1776 Another victory in 1777 at the Battle of Saratoga resulted in the capture of a British army and led to France and Spain joining in the war against them After the surrender of a second British army at the siege of Yorktown in 1781 Britain signed a peace treaty American sovereignty became internationally recognized and the new nation took possession of substantial territory east of the Mississippi River from what is today Canada in the north and Florida in the south 90 As it became increasingly apparent that the Confederation was insufficient to govern the new country nationalists advocated for and led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in writing the United States Constitution to replace it ratified in state conventions in 1788 Going into force in 1789 this constitution reorganized the government into a federation administered by three equal branches executive judicial and legislative on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances George Washington who had led the Continental Army to victory and then willingly relinquished power was the first president elected under the new constitution The Bill of Rights forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections was adopted in 1791 91 Tensions with Britain remained however leading to the War of 1812 which was fought to a draw 92 Although the federal government outlawed American participation in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 after 1820 cultivation of the highly profitable cotton crop exploded in the Deep South and along with it the use of slave labor 93 94 95 The Second Great Awakening especially in the period 1800 1840 converted millions to evangelical Protestantism In the North it energized multiple social reform movements including abolitionism 96 in the South Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations 97 Territorial acquisitions of the United States between 1783 and 1917 In the late 18th century American settlers began to expand further westward some of them with a sense of manifest destiny 98 99 The 1803 Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the nation s area 100 Spain ceded Florida and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819 101 the Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845 during a period of expansionism 99 and the 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U S control of the present day American Northwest 102 Additionally the Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that forcibly resettled Indians This further expanded acreage under mechanical cultivation increasing surpluses for international markets This prompted a long series of American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi River from 1810 to at least 1890 103 and eventually conflict with Mexico 104 Most of these conflicts ended with the cession of Native American territory and their confinement to Indian reservations Victory in the Mexican American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present day American Southwest and the U S spanned the continent 98 105 The California Gold Rush of 1848 1849 spurred migration to the Pacific coast which led to the California Genocide 106 and the creation of additional western states 107 Economic development was spurred by giving vast quantities of land nearly 10 of the total area of the United States to white European settlers as part of the Homestead Acts as well as making land grants to private railroad companies and colleges 108 Prior to the Civil War the prohibition or expansion of slavery into these territories exacerbated tensions over the debate around abolitionism The Civil War and Reconstruction Main article History of the United States 1849 1865 Further information American Civil War and Reconstruction era See also Lost Cause of the Confederacy Status of the states 1861 Slave states that seceded before April 15 1861 Slave states that seceded after April 15 1861 Union states that permitted slavery border states Union states that banned slavery Territories Irreconcilable sectional conflict regarding the enslavement of Africans and African Americans ultimately led to the American Civil War 109 With the 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln conventions in eleven slave states declared secession and formed the Confederate States of America while the federal government the Union maintained that secession was unconstitutional and illegitimate 110 On April 12 1861 the Confederacy initiated military conflict by bombarding Fort Sumter a federal garrison in Charleston harbor South Carolina This would be the spark of the Civil War which lasted for four years 1861 1865 and became the deadliest military conflict in American history The war would result in the deaths of approximately 620 000 soldiers from both sides and upwards of 50 000 civilians almost all of them in the South 111 Reconstruction began in earnest following the war While President Lincoln attempted to foster friendship and forgiveness between the Union and the former Confederacy his assassination on April 14 1865 drove a wedge between North and South again Republicans in the federal government made it their goal to oversee the rebuilding of the South and to ensure the rights of African Americans They persisted until the Compromise of 1877 when the Republicans agreed to cease enforcing the rights of African Americans in the South in order for Democrats to concede the presidential election of 1876 Influential Southern whites calling themselves Redeemers took control of the South after the end of Reconstruction beginning the nadir of American race relations From 1890 to 1910 the Redeemers established so called Jim Crow laws disenfranchising almost all blacks and some impoverished whites throughout the region Blacks would face racial segregation nationwide especially in the South 112 They also lived under constant threat of vigilante violence including lynching 113 Industrial Age and the Progressive Era Main article History of the United States 1865 1918 Further information Economic history of the United States Immigration to the United States and Technological and industrial history of the United States source source source source source source source source source source Film by Edison Studios showing immigrants at Ellis Island in New York Harbor that was a major entry point for European immigration into the U S 114 In the North urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country s industrialization and transformed its culture 115 National infrastructure including telegraph and transcontinental railroads spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the American Old West After the American Civil War new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers expanded internal trade and increased conflicts with Native Americans 116 The later inventions of electric light and the telephone would also affect communication and urban life 117 Mainland expansion also included the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 118 In 1893 pro American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and formed the Republic of Hawaii which the U S annexed in 1898 Puerto Rico Guam and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year following the Spanish American War 119 American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the Second Samoan Civil War 120 The U S Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917 121 Rapid economic development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries fostered the rise of many prominent industrialists Tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt John D Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie led the nation s progress in the railroad petroleum and steel industries Banking became a major part of the economy with J P Morgan playing a notable role The American economy boomed becoming the world s largest 122 The unequal distribution of wealth remained high during this period From 1860 to 1900 the wealthiest 2 of American households owned more than a third of the nation s wealth while the top 10 owned roughly three quarters of it 123 The bottom 40 had no wealth at all 124 In terms of property the wealthiest 1 owned 51 while the bottom 44 claimed 1 1 124 These dramatic changes were accompanied by huge increases in immigration growing inequality and social unrest which prompted the rise of organized labor along with populist socialist and anarchist movements 125 This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era which saw significant reforms including health and safety regulation of consumer goods the rise of labor unions and greater antitrust measures to ensure competition among businesses and attention to worker conditions The rise to world power the New Deal and World War II Main article History of the United States 1918 1945 Further information United States in World War I Great Depression in the United States and Military history of the United States during World War II Worker during construction of the Empire State Building in New York City in 1930 Mushroom cloud formed by the Trinity Experiment in New Mexico part of the Manhattan Project the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in history July 1945 The United States remained neutral from the outbreak of World War I in 1914 until 1917 when it joined the war as an associated power alongside the Allies of World War I helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers In 1919 President Woodrow Wilson took a leading diplomatic role at the Paris Peace Conference and advocated strongly for the U S to join the League of Nations However the Senate refused to approve this and did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles that established the League of Nations 126 Around this time millions of rural African Americans began a mass migration from the South to northern urban centers it would continue until about 1970 127 The last vestiges of the Progressive Era resulted in women s suffrage and alcohol prohibition 128 129 130 In 1920 the women s rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women s suffrage 131 The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of radio for mass communication and the invention of early television 132 The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression After his election as president in 1932 Franklin D Roosevelt responded with the New Deal 133 The Dust Bowl of the mid 1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration 134 At first neutral during World War II the United States in March 1941 began supplying materiel to the Allies On December 7 1941 the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor prompting the United States to join the Allies against the Axis powers and in the following year to intern about 120 000 Japanese and Japanese Americans 135 136 The U S pursued a Europe first defense policy 137 leaving the Philippines an American colony isolated and alone to fight Japan s invasion and occupation until the U S led Philippines campaign 1944 1945 During the war the United States was one of the Four Powers 138 who met to plan the postwar world along with Britain the Soviet Union and China 139 140 The United States emerged relatively unscathed from the war and with even greater economic and military influence 141 The United States played a leading role in the Bretton Woods and Yalta conferences which signed agreements on new international financial institutions and Europe s postwar reorganization As an Allied victory was won in Europe a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter which became active after the war 142 The United States developed the first nuclear weapons and used them on Japan in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 the Japanese surrendered on September 2 ending World War II 143 144 Cold War and late 20th century Main articles History of the United States 1945 1964 1964 1980 1980 1991 and 1991 2008 Post World War II economic expansion in the U S led to suburban development and urban sprawl as shown in this aerial photograph of Levittown Pennsylvania circa 1959 After World War II the United States financed and implemented the Marshall Plan to help rebuild western Europe disbursements paid between 1948 and 1952 would total 13 billion 115 billion in 2021 145 Also at this time geopolitical tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union led to the Cold War driven by an ideological divide between capitalism and communism 146 They dominated the military affairs of Europe with the U S and its NATO allies on one side and the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies on the other 147 The U S often opposed Third World movements that it viewed as Soviet sponsored sometimes pursuing direct action for regime change against left wing governments 148 American troops fought the communist forces in the Korean War of 1950 1953 149 and the U S became increasingly involved in the Vietnam War 1955 1975 introducing combat forces in 1965 150 Their competition to achieve superior spaceflight capability led to the Space Race which culminated in the U S becoming the first nation to land people on the Moon in 1969 149 While both countries engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear weapons they avoided direct military conflict 147 At home the United States experienced sustained economic expansion urbanization and a rapid growth of its population and middle class following World War II Construction of an Interstate Highway System transformed the nation s transportation infrastructure in decades to come 151 152 In 1959 the United States admitted Alaska and Hawaii to become the 49th and 50th states formally expanding beyond the contiguous United States 153 Martin Luther King Jr gives his famous I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington 1963 The growing civil rights movement used nonviolence to confront racism with Martin Luther King Jr becoming a prominent leader and figurehead 154 President Lyndon B Johnson initiated legislation that led to a series of policies addressing poverty and racial inequalities in what he termed the Great Society The launch of a War on Poverty expanded entitlements and welfare spending leading to the creation of the Food Stamp Program Aid to Families with Dependent Children along with national health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid 155 A combination of court decisions and legislation culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1968 made significant improvements 156 157 158 Meanwhile a counterculture movement grew which was fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War the Black Power movement and the sexual revolution 159 The women s movement in the U S broadened the debate on women s rights and made gender equality a major social goal The 1960s Sexual Revolution liberalized American attitudes to sexuality 160 the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City marked the beginning of the fledgling gay rights movement 161 162 The United States supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War in response the country faced an oil embargo from OPEC nations sparking the 1973 oil crisis The presidency of Richard Nixon saw the American withdrawal from Vietnam but also the Watergate scandal which led to his resignation in disgrace and a decline in public trust of government that expanded for decades 163 After a surge in female labor participation around the 1970s by 1985 the majority of women aged 16 and over were employed 164 The 1970s and early 1980s also saw the onset of stagflation U S president Ronald Reagan left and Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit in 1985 After his election in 1980 President Ronald Reagan responded to economic stagnation with neoliberal reforms and initiated the more aggressive rollback strategy towards the Soviet Union 165 166 167 During Reagan s presidency the federal debt held by the public nearly tripled in nominal terms from 738 billion to 2 1 trillion 168 This led to the United States moving from the world s largest international creditor to the world s largest debtor nation 169 The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended the Cold War 170 171 172 ensuring a global unipolarity 173 in which the U S was unchallenged as the world s dominant superpower 174 Fearing the spread of regional international instability from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1991 President George H W Bush launched and led the Gulf War against Iraq expelling Iraqi forces and restoring the Kuwaiti monarchy 175 During the administration of President Bill Clinton in 1994 the U S signed the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA causing trade among the U S Canada and Mexico to soar 176 Due to the dot com boom stable monetary policy and reduced social welfare spending the 1990s saw the longest economic expansion in modern U S history 177 21st century Main articles History of the United States 1991 2008 and 2008 present The World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan during the September 11 attacks by the Islamic terrorist group Al Qaeda in 2001 On September 11 2001 al Qaeda terrorist hijackers flew passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington D C killing nearly 3 000 people 178 In response President George W Bush launched the War on Terror which included a nearly 20 year war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021 and the 2003 2011 Iraq War 179 180 Government policy designed to promote affordable housing 181 widespread failures in corporate and regulatory governance 182 and historically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve 183 led to a housing bubble in 2006 This culminated in the financial crisis of 2007 2008 and the Great Recession the nation s largest economic contraction since the Great Depression 184 Barack Obama the first multiracial 185 president with African American ancestry was elected in 2008 amid the financial crisis 186 By the end of his second term the stock market median household income and net worth and the number of persons with jobs were all at record levels while the unemployment rate was well below the historical average 187 188 189 190 191 His signature legislative accomplishment was the Affordable Care Act ACA popularly known as Obamacare It represented the U S health care system s most significant regulatory overhaul and expansion of coverage since Medicare in 1965 As a result the uninsured share of the population was cut in half while the number of newly insured Americans was estimated to be between 20 and 24 million 192 After Obama served two terms Republican Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president in 2016 His election is viewed as one of the biggest political upsets in American history 193 Trump held office through the first waves of the COVID 19 pandemic and the resulting COVID 19 recession starting in 2020 that exceeded even the Great Recession earlier in the century 194 The early 2020s saw the country become more divided with various social issues sparking debate and protest The murder of George Floyd in 2020 led to widespread civil unrest in urban centers and a national debate about police brutality and lingering institutional racism 195 The nationwide increase in the frequency of instances and number of deaths related to mass shootings added to the societal tensions 196 On January 6 2021 supporters of the outgoing president Trump stormed the U S Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to disrupt the Electoral College vote count that would confirm Democrat Joe Biden as the 46th president 197 In 2022 the Supreme Court ruled that there is no constitutional right to an abortion causing another wave of protests across the country and stoking international reactions as well 198 Despite these divisions the country has remained unified against Russia after Vladimir Putin s 2022 invasion of Ukraine with politicians and individuals across the political spectrum supporting arms shipments to Ukraine and many large American corporations pulling out of Russia and Belarus altogether 199 GeographyMain article Geography of the United States Topographic map of the United States Denali or Mount McKinley in Alaska the highest mountain peak in North America The 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia occupy a combined area of 3 119 885 square miles 8 080 470 km2 Of this area 2 959 064 square miles 7 663 940 km2 is contiguous land composing 83 65 of total U S land area 200 201 About 15 is occupied by Alaska a state in northwestern North America with the remainder in Hawaii a state and archipelago in the central Pacific and the five populated but unincorporated insular territories of Puerto Rico American Samoa Guam the Northern Mariana Islands and the U S Virgin Islands 202 Measured by only land area the United States is third in size behind Russia and China and just ahead of Canada 203 The United States is the world s third or fourth largest nation by total area land and water ranking behind Russia and Canada and nearly equal to China The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and how the total size of the United States is measured b 204 The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont 205 The Appalachian Mountains and the Adirondack massif divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest 206 The Mississippi Missouri River the world s fourth longest river system runs mainly north south through the heart of the country The flat fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west interrupted by a highland region in the southeast 206 The Rocky Mountains west of the Great Plains extend north to south across the country peaking at over 14 000 feet 4 300 m in Colorado 207 Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua Sonoran and Mojave 208 The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast both ranges also reaching altitudes higher than 14 000 feet 4 300 m The lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States are in the state of California 209 and only about 84 miles 135 km apart 210 At an elevation of 20 310 feet 6 190 5 m Alaska s Denali is the highest peak in the country and in North America 211 Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska s Alexander and Aleutian Islands and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent s largest volcanic feature 212 Climate Main articles Climate of the United States and Climate change in the United States Koppen climate types of the U S The United States with its large size and geographic variety includes most climate types To the east of the 100th meridian the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south 213 The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi arid Many mountainous areas of the American West have an alpine climate The climate is arid in the Great Basin desert in the Southwest Mediterranean in coastal California and oceanic in coastal Oregon and Washington and southern Alaska Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar Hawaii and the southern tip of Florida are tropical as well as its territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific 214 States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes and most of the world s tornadoes occur in the country mainly in Tornado Alley areas in the Midwest and South 215 Overall the United States receives more high impact extreme weather incidents than any other country in the world 216 Extreme weather has become more frequent in the U S with three times the number of reported heat waves as in the 1960s Of the ten warmest years ever recorded in the 48 contiguous states eight have occurred since 1998 In the American Southwest droughts have become more persistent and more severe 217 Biodiversity and conservation Main articles Fauna of the United States and Flora of the United States The bald eagle has been the national bird of the United States since 1782 218 The U S is one of 17 megadiverse countries containing large numbers of endemic species about 17 000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska and more than 1 800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii few of which occur on the mainland 219 The United States is home to 428 mammal species 784 birds 311 reptiles and 295 amphibians 220 and 91 000 insect species 221 There are 63 national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks forests and wilderness areas which are managed by the National Park Service 222 Altogether the government owns about 28 of the country s land area 223 mostly in the western states 224 Most of this land is protected though some is leased for oil and gas drilling mining logging or cattle ranching and about 86 is used for military purposes 225 226 Environmental issues include debates on oil and nuclear energy dealing with air and water pollution the economic costs of protecting wildlife logging and deforestation 227 228 and climate change 229 230 The most prominent environmental agency is the Environmental Protection Agency EPA created by presidential order in 1970 231 The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964 with the Wilderness Act 232 The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is intended to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service 233 As of 2020 the U S ranked 24th among nations in the Environmental Performance Index 234 The country joined the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2016 and has many other environmental commitments 235 It withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2020 236 but rejoined it in 2021 237 Government and politicsMain article Politics of the United States Further information Political parties in the United States Elections in the United States Political ideologies in the United States American nationalism and American civil religion The United States Capitol where Congress meets the Senate left the House right The White House residence and workplace of the U S President The Supreme Court Building where the nation s highest court sits The United States is a federal republic of 50 states a federal district five territories and several uninhabited island possessions 238 239 240 It is the world s oldest surviving federation and according to the World Economic Forum the oldest democracy as well 241 It is a representative democracy in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law 242 Major democracy indexes uniformly classify the country as a liberal democracy 243 although the The Economist s Democracy Index has noted growing and high levels of political polarization during the late 2010s and early 2020s 244 245 The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index and Global Corruption Barometer by the German organization Transparency International ranks the country as having low levels of actual and perceived corruption 246 247 In the American federal system sovereignty is shared between two levels of government federal and state Citizens of the states are also governed by local governments which are administrative divisions of the states The territories are administrative divisions of the federal government The U S Constitution serves as the country s supreme legal document The Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government and its relationship with the individual states The Constitution has been amended 27 times 248 the first ten amendments Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of Americans individual rights All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial review and any law can be voided if the courts determine that it violates the Constitution The principle of judicial review not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution was established by the Supreme Court in Marbury v Madison 1803 249 The United States has operated under a two party system for most of its history 250 although what the two parties are has changed over time the country is currently in either the Fifth or Sixth Party System In current American political culture the center right Republican Party is considered conservative and the center left Democratic Party is considered liberal 251 Federal government Main article Government of the United States The federal government comprises three branches which are headquartered in Washington D C and regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the Constitution 252 Legislative The bicameral Congress made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives makes federal law declares war approves treaties has the power of the purse 253 and has the power of impeachment by which it can remove sitting members of the federal government 254 Executive The president is the commander in chief of the military can veto legislative bills before they become law subject to congressional override and appoints the members of the Cabinet subject to Senate approval and other officers who administer and enforce federal laws and policies 255 Judicial The Supreme Court and lower federal courts whose judges are appointed by the president with Senate approval interpret laws and overturn those they find unconstitutional 256 The lower house the House of Representatives has 435 voting members each representing a congressional district for a two year term House seats are apportioned among the states by population Each state then draws single member districts to conform with the census apportionment The District of Columbia and the five major U S territories each have one member of Congress these members are not allowed to vote 257 The upper house the Senate has 100 members with each state having two senators elected at large to six year terms one third of Senate seats are up for election every two years The District of Columbia and the five major U S territories do not have senators 257 The Senate is unique among upper houses in being the most prestigious and powerful portion of the country s bicameral system political scientists have frequently labeled it the most powerful upper house of any government 258 The president serves a four year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice The president is not elected by direct vote but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned to the states and the District of Columbia 259 The Supreme Court led by the chief justice of the United States has nine members who serve for life 260 Political subdivisions Main articles Political divisions of the United States State government in the United States Local government in the United States and U S state Further information List of states and territories of the United States Indian reservation and Territories of the United States See also Territorial evolution of the United States Each of the 50 states holds jurisdiction over a geographic territory where it shares sovereignty with the federal government They are subdivided into counties or county equivalents and further divided into municipalities The District of Columbia is a federal district that contains the capital of the United States the city of Washington 261 Each state has an amount of presidential electors equal to the number of their representatives plus senators in Congress and the District of Columbia has three electors 262 Territories of the United States do not have presidential electors therefore people there cannot vote for the president 257 Citizenship is granted at birth in all states the District of Columbia and all major U S territories except American Samoa l 266 263 The United States observes limited tribal sovereignty of the American Indian nations like states sovereignty American Indians are U S citizens and tribal lands are subject to the jurisdiction of the U S Congress and the federal courts Like the states tribes have some autonomy restrictions They are prohibited from making war engaging in their own foreign relations and printing or issuing independent currency 267 Indian reservations are usually contained within one state but there are 12 reservations that cross state boundaries 268 Foreign relations Main articles Foreign relations of the United States and Foreign policy of the United States The United Nations headquarters has been situated along the East River in Midtown Manhattan since 1952 The United States is a founding member of the UN The United States has an established structure of foreign relations and it had the world s second largest diplomatic corps in 2019 269 It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council 270 and home to the United Nations headquarters 271 The United States is also a member of the G7 272 G20 273 and OECD intergovernmental organizations 274 Almost all countries have embassies and many have consulates official representatives in the country Likewise nearly all nations host formal diplomatic missions with United States except Iran 275 North Korea 276 and Bhutan 277 Though Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic relations with the U S it maintains close if unofficial relations The United States also regularly supplies Taiwan with military equipment 278 The United States has a Special Relationship with the United Kingdom 279 and strong ties with Canada 280 Australia 281 New Zealand 282 the Philippines 283 Japan 284 South Korea 285 Israel 286 and several European Union countries France Italy Germany Spain and Poland 287 The U S works closely with its NATO allies on military and national security issues and with nations in the Americas through the Organization of American States and the United States Mexico Canada Free Trade Agreement In South America Colombia is traditionally considered to be the closest ally of the United States 288 289 The U S exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for Micronesia the Marshall Islands and Palau through the Compact of Free Association 290 The U S has become a key ally of Ukraine since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 in 2014 and began an invasion of Ukraine in 2022 significantly deteriorating relations with Russia in the process 291 The U S has also experienced a deterioration of relations with China and grown closer to Taiwan 292 293 294 Military Main articles United States Armed Forces and Military history of the United States B 2 Spirit the stealth heavy strategic bomber of the USAF The Pentagon near Washington D C is home to the U S Department of Defense The president is the commander in chief of the United States Armed Forces and appoints its leaders the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff The Department of Defense which is headquartered at the Pentagon near Washington D C administers five of the six service branches which are made up of the Army Marine Corps Navy Air Force and Space Force The Coast Guard is administered by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and can be transferred to the Department of the Navy in wartime 295 The United States spent 649 billion on its military in 2019 36 of global military spending At 4 7 of GDP the percentage was the second highest among all countries after Saudi Arabia 296 It also has more than 40 of the world s nuclear weapons the second largest after Russia 297 In 2019 all six branches of the U S Armed Forces reported 1 4 million personnel on active duty 298 The Reserves and National Guard brought the total number of troops to 2 3 million 298 The Department of Defense also employed about 700 000 civilians not including contractors 299 Military service in the United States is voluntary although conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System 300 The United States has the third largest combined armed forces in the world behind the Chinese People s Liberation Army and Indian Armed Forces 301 Today American forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force s large fleet of transport aircraft the Navy s 11 active aircraft carriers and Marine expeditionary units at sea with the Navy and Army s XVIII Airborne Corps and 75th Ranger Regiment deployed by Air Force transport aircraft The Air Force can strike targets across the globe through its fleet of strategic bombers maintains the air defense across the United States and provides close air support to Army and Marine Corps ground forces 302 303 The Space Force operates the Global Positioning System operates the Eastern and Western Ranges for all space launches and operates the United States s Space Surveillance and Missile Warning networks 304 305 306 The military operates about 800 bases and facilities abroad 307 and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries 308 Law enforcement and crime Main articles Law enforcement in the United States and Crime in the United States Total incarceration in the United States by year 1920 2014 There are about 18 000 U S police agencies from local to federal level in the United States 309 Law in the United States is mainly enforced by local police departments and sheriff s offices The state police provides broader services and federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI and the U S Marshals Service have specialized duties such as protecting civil rights national security and enforcing U S federal courts rulings and federal laws 310 State courts conduct most civil and criminal trials 311 and federal courts handle designated crimes and appeals from the state criminal courts 312 As of 2020 update the United States has an intentional homicide rate of 7 per 100 000 people 313 A cross sectional analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database from 2010 showed that United States homicide rates were 7 0 times higher than in other high income countries driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25 2 times higher 314 As of 2023 update the United States has the sixth highest documented incarceration rate and second largest prison population in the world 315 In 2019 the total prison population for those sentenced to more than a year is 1 430 800 corresponding to a ratio of 419 per 100 000 residents and the lowest since 1995 316 Some estimates place that number higher such Prison Policy Initiative s 2 3 million 317 Various states have attempted to reduce their prison populations via government policies and grassroots initiatives 318 Although most nations have abolished capital punishment 319 it is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes and in 27 states out of 50 and in one territory 320 Several of these states have moratoriums on carrying out the penalty each imposed by the state s governor 321 322 323 Since 1977 there have been more than 1 500 executions 324 giving the U S the sixth highest number of executions in the world following China Iran Saudi Arabia Iraq and Egypt 325 However the number is trended down nationally with several states recently abolishing the penalty 326 EconomyMain article Economy of the United States Further information Economic history of the United States Taxation in the United States and United States federal budget The U S dollar featuring George Washington is the currency most used in international transactions and is the world s foremost reserve currency 327 The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street the world s largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies 328 According to the International Monetary Fund the U S gross domestic product GDP of 22 7 trillion constitutes 24 of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 16 of the gross world product at purchasing power parity PPP 329 13 From 1983 to 2008 U S real compounded annual GDP growth was 3 3 compared to a 2 3 weighted average for the rest of the G7 330 The country ranks fifth in the world in nominal GDP per capita 331 and seventh in GDP per capita at PPP 13 The country has been the world s largest economy since at least 1900 332 The United States is at or near the forefront of technological advancement and innovation 333 in many economic sectors especially in artificial intelligence computers pharmaceuticals and medical aerospace and military equipment 334 The nation s economy is fueled by abundant natural resources a well developed infrastructure and high productivity 335 It has the second highest total estimated value of natural resources valued at US 44 98 trillion in 2019 although sources differ on their estimates Americans have the highest average household and employee income among OECD member states 336 In 2013 they had the sixth highest median household income down from fourth highest in 2010 337 338 The U S dollar is the currency most used in international transactions and is the world s foremost reserve currency backed by the country s economy its military the petrodollar system and its linked eurodollar and large U S treasuries market 327 Several countries use it as their official currency and in others it is the de facto currency 339 340 The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are the world s largest stock exchanges by market capitalization and trade volume 341 342 The largest U S trading partners are China the European Union Canada Mexico India Japan South Korea the United Kingdom and Taiwan 343 The U S is the world s largest importer and the second largest exporter 344 It has free trade agreements with several countries including the USMCA 345 The U S ranked second in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2019 after Singapore 346 Of the world s 500 largest companies 124 are headquartered in the U S 347 While its economy has reached a post industrial level of development the United States remains an industrial power 348 It has a smaller welfare state and redistributes less income through government action than most other high income countries 349 The United States ranked the 41st highest in income inequality among 156 countries in 2017 350 and the highest compared to the rest of the developed world 351 352 As of January 1 2023 the United States had a national debt of 31 4 trillion 353 the largest of any country Income and poverty Main articles Income in the United States and Poverty in the United States Further information Affluence in the United States and Income inequality in the United States CBO chart featuring U S family wealth between 1989 and 2013 The top 10 of families held 76 of the wealth in 2013 while the bottom 50 of families held 1 Inequality increased from 1989 to 2013 354 At 46 625 USD in 2021 American citizens have the highest median income in the world 355 Despite the fact that they only account for 4 24 of the global population they collectively possess 30 2 of the world s total wealth as of 2021 the largest percentage of any country 356 The U S also ranks first in the number of dollar billionaires and millionaires in the world with 724 billionaires as of 2021 357 and nearly 22 million millionaires 2021 358 Wealth in the United States is highly concentrated the richest 10 of the adult population own 72 of the country s household wealth while the bottom 50 own just 2 359 Income inequality in the U S remains at record highs 360 with the top fifth of earners taking home more than half of all income 361 and giving the U S one of the widest income distributions among OECD members 362 The United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation 363 and is one of a few countries in the world without paid family leave as a legal right 364 The United States also has a higher percentage of low income workers than almost any other developed nation largely because of a weak collective bargaining system and lack of government support for at risk workers 365 There were about 567 715 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons in the U S in January 2019 with almost two thirds staying in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program 366 Attempts to combat homelessness include the Section 8 housing voucher program and implementation of the Housing First strategy across all levels of government 367 In 2011 16 7 million children lived in food insecure households about 35 more than 2007 levels though only 845 000 U S children 1 1 saw reduced food intake or disrupted eating patterns at some point during the year and most cases were not chronic 368 As of June 2018 update 40 million people roughly 12 7 of the U S population were living in poverty including 13 3 million children Of those impoverished 18 5 million live in deep poverty family income below one half of the federal government s poverty threshold 352 Science technology and energy Main articles Science and technology in the United States Science policy of the United States and Energy in the United States U S astronaut Buzz Aldrin saluting the flag on the Moon during the Apollo 11 1969 The United States is the only country that has sent manned missions to the lunar surface The United States has been a leader in technological innovation since the late 19th century and scientific research since the mid 20th century Methods for producing interchangeable parts and the establishment of a machine tool industry enabled the U S to have large scale manufacturing of sewing machines bicycles and other items in the late 19th century In the early 20th century factory electrification the introduction of the assembly line and other labor saving techniques created the system of mass production 369 In the 21st century approximately two thirds of research and development funding comes from the private sector 370 In 2020 the United States was the country with the second highest number of published scientific papers 371 and second most patents granted 372 both after China In 2021 the United States launched a total of 51 spaceflights China reported 55 373 The U S had 2 944 active satellites in space in December 2021 the highest number of any country 374 In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U S patent for the telephone Thomas Edison s research laboratory developed the phonograph the first long lasting light bulb and the first viable movie camera 375 The Wright brothers in 1903 made the first sustained and controlled heavier than air powered flight and the automobile companies of Ransom E Olds and Henry Ford popularized the assembly line in the early 20th century 376 The rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1920s and 30s led many European scientists such as Albert Einstein Enrico Fermi and John von Neumann to immigrate to the United States 377 During World War II the Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons ushering in the Atomic Age During the Cold War competition for superior missile capability ushered in the Space Race between the U S and Soviet Union 378 379 The invention of the transistor in the 1950s a key component in almost all modern electronics led to the development of microprocessors software personal computers and the Internet 380 In 2022 the United States ranked 2nd in the Global Innovation Index 381 As of 2019 update the United States receives approximately 80 of its energy from fossil fuels 382 In 2019 the largest source of the country s energy came from petroleum 36 6 followed by natural gas 32 coal 11 4 renewable sources 11 4 and nuclear power 8 4 382 Americans constitute less than 5 of the world s population but consume 17 of the world s energy 383 They account for about 25 of the world s petroleum consumption while producing only 6 of the world s annual petroleum supply 384 The U S ranks as second highest emitter of greenhouse gases exceeded only by China 385 Transportation Main article Transportation in the United States The Downtown Connector in Atlanta Georgia part of the Interstate Highway System The United States s rail network nearly all standard gauge is the longest in the world and exceeds 293 564 km 182 400 mi 386 It handles mostly freight with intercity passenger service provided by Amtrak to all but four states 387 The country s inland waterways are the world s fifth longest and total 41 009 km 25 482 mi 388 Personal transportation is dominated by automobiles which operate on a network of 4 million miles 6 4 million kilometers of public roads 389 The United States has the world s second largest automobile market 390 and has the highest vehicle ownership per capita in the world with 816 4 vehicles per 1 000 Americans 2014 391 In 2017 there were 255 million non two wheel motor vehicles or about 910 vehicles per 1 000 people 392 The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely deregulated since 1978 while most major airports are publicly owned 393 The three largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are U S based American Airlines is number one after its 2013 acquisition by US Airways 394 Of the world s 50 busiest passenger airports 16 are in the United States including the busiest Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport 395 Of the fifty busiest container ports four are located in the United States of which the busiest is the Port of Los Angeles 396 DemographicsMain articles Americans Demographics of the United States Race and ethnicity in the United States and Family structure in the United States Population See also List of U S states by population Historical population CensusPop Note 17903 929 326 18005 308 48335 1 18107 239 88136 4 18209 638 45333 1 183012 866 02033 5 184017 069 45332 7 185023 191 87635 9 186031 443 32135 6 187038 925 59823 8 188050 189 20928 9 189062 979 76625 5 190076 212 16821 0 191092 228 49621 0 1920106 021 53715 0 1930122 775 04615 8 1940132 164 5697 6 1950150 697 36114 0 1960179 323 17519 0 1970203 392 03113 4 1980226 545 80511 4 1990248 709 8739 8 2000281 421 90613 2 2010308 745 5389 7 2020331 449 2817 4 U S Decennial CensusThe U S Census Bureau reported 331 449 281 residents as of April 1 2020 m 397 making the United States the third most populous nation in the world after China and India 398 According to the Bureau s U S Population Clock on January 28 2021 the U S population had a net gain of one person every 100 seconds or about 864 people per day 399 In 2018 52 of Americans age 15 and over were married 6 were widowed 10 were divorced and 32 had never been married 400 In 2020 the U S had a total fertility rate stood at 1 64 children per woman 401 and the world s highest rate 23 of children living in single parent households 402 The United States of America has a diverse population 37 ancestry groups have more than one million members 403 White Americans with ancestry from Europe the Middle East or North Africa form the largest racial and ethnic group at 57 8 of the United States population 404 405 Hispanic and Latino Americans form the second largest group and are 18 7 of the United States population African Americans constitute the nation s third largest ancestry group and are 12 1 of the total United States population 403 Asian Americans are the country s fourth largest group composing 5 9 of the United States population while the country s 3 7 million Native Americans account for about 1 403 In 2020 the median age of the United States population was 38 5 years 398 In 2018 there were almost 90 million immigrants and U S born children of immigrants in the United States accounting for 28 of the overall U S population 406 In 2017 out of the U S foreign born population some 45 20 7 million were naturalized citizens 27 12 3 million were lawful permanent residents 6 2 2 million were temporary lawful residents and 23 10 5 million were unauthorized immigrants 407 The United States led the world in refugee resettlement for decades admitting more refugees than the rest of the world combined 408 Language Main article Languages of the United States English specifically American English is the de facto national language of the United States Although there is no official language at the federal level some laws such as U S naturalization requirements standardize English and most states have declared English as the official language 409 Three states and four U S territories have recognized local or indigenous languages in addition to English including Hawaii Hawaiian 410 Alaska twenty Native languages n 411 South Dakota Sioux 412 American Samoa Samoan Puerto Rico Spanish Guam Chamorro and the Northern Mariana Islands Carolinian and Chamorro In Puerto Rico Spanish is more widely spoken than English 413 According to the American Community Survey in 2010 some 229 million people out of the total U S population of 308 million spoke only English at home More than 37 million spoke Spanish at home making it the second most commonly used language in the United States Other languages spoken at home by one million people or more include Chinese 2 8 million Tagalog 1 6 million Vietnamese 1 4 million French 1 3 million Korean 1 1 million and German 1 million 414 The most widely taught foreign languages in the United States in terms of enrollment numbers from kindergarten through university undergraduate education are Spanish around 7 2 million students French 1 5 million and German 500 000 Other commonly taught languages include Latin Japanese American Sign Language Italian and Chinese 415 416 Religion Main article Religion in the United States See also List of religious movements that began in the United States Religion in the United States 2022 Pew Research Center 417 Protestant 40 Catholic 21 Mormonism 2 Orthodox 1 Unaffiliated 29 Jewish 2 Muslim 1 Hindu 1 Buddhist 1 Unknown Refused Other 3 A large variety of faiths have historically flourished within the country According to the World Values Survey in 2017 the United States is more secular than the median country they ranked the United States the 32nd least religious country in the world 418 Until the 1990s the country was a substantial outlier among other highly developed countries uniquely combining a high level of religiosity and wealth although this has lessened significantly since then 418 419 420 421 Gallup polls during the early 2020s found that about 81 of Americans believe in some conception of God 45 report praying on a daily basis 41 report that religion plays a very important role in their lives and 31 report attending religious services weekly or near weekly 422 423 424 According to Gallup in December 2022 58 of Americans report seldom or never attending religious services 424 According to the Institute for Family Studies in 2022 around 28 of Americans attended at least once or twice a month 425 In a 2020 survey about 64 of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians making it the country with the largest Christian population 426 Protestantism is the largest Christian religious grouping in the United States accounting for around a third of all Americans In the so called Bible Belt located primarily within the Southern United States socially conservative evangelical Protestantism plays a significant role culturally By contrast religion plays the least important role in New England and the Western United States 427 Another 6 claimed a non Christian faith 419 the largest of which are Judaism Islam Hinduism and Buddhism 428 Around 30 of Americans describe themselves as having no religion 419 Membership in a house of worship fell from 70 in 1999 to 47 in 2020 much of the decline related to the number of Americans expressing no religious preference Membership also fell among those who identified with a specific religious group 429 430 According to Gallup trust in the church or organized religion has declined significantly since the 1970s 431 The First Amendment of the U S Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its establishment 432 Urbanization Main articles Urbanization in the United States and List of United States cities by population About 82 of Americans live in urban areas including suburbs 204 about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50 000 433 In 2008 273 incorporated municipalities had populations over 100 000 nine cities had more than one million residents and four cities New York City Los Angeles Chicago and Houston had populations exceeding two million 434 Many U S metropolitan populations are growing rapidly particularly in the South and West 435 vte Largest metropolitan areas in the United States 2021 MSA population estimates from the U S Census BureauRank Name Region Pop Rank Name Region Pop New York Los Angeles 1 New York Northeast 19 768 458 11 Boston Northeast 4 899 9322 Los Angeles West 12 997 353 12 Riverside San Bernardino West 4 653 1053 Chicago Midwest 9 509 934 13 San Francisco West 4 623 2644 Dallas Fort Worth South 7 759 615 14 Detroit Midwest 4 365 2055 Houston South 7 206 841 15 Seattle West 4 011 5536 Washington D C South 6 356 434 16 Minneapolis Saint Paul Midwest 3 690 5127 Philadelphia Northeast 6 228 601 17 San Diego West 3 286 0698 Atlanta South 6 144 050 18 Tampa St Petersburg South 3 219 5149 Miami South 6 091 747 19 Denver West 2 972 56610 Phoenix West 4 946 145 20 Baltimore South 2 838 327 Education Main articles Education in the United States and Higher education in the United States The University of Virginia founded by Thomas Jefferson is one of the many public colleges and universities in the United States American public education is operated by state and local governments and regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants In most states children are required to attend school from the age of five or six beginning with kindergarten or first grade until they turn 18 generally bringing them through twelfth grade the end of high school some states allow students to leave school at 16 or 17 436 Of Americans 25 and older 84 6 graduated from high school 52 6 attended some college 27 2 earned a bachelor s degree and 9 6 earned graduate degrees 437 The basic literacy rate is approximately 99 204 438 The United States has many private and public institutions of higher education The majority of the world s top public and private universities namely research universities as listed by various ranking organizations are in the United States 439 There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies shorter academic programs and lower tuition 440 The U S spends more on education per student than any nation in the world 441 spending an average of 12 794 per year on public elementary and secondary school students in the 2016 2017 school year 442 As for public expenditures on higher education the U S spends more per student than the OECD average and more than all nations in combined public and private spending 443 Despite some student loan forgiveness programs in place 444 student loan debt has increased by 102 in the last decade 445 and exceeded 1 7 trillion dollars as of 2022 446 Health See also Health care in the United States Health care reform in the United States and Health insurance in the United States The Texas Medical Center in downtown Houston is the largest medical complex in the world 447 In a preliminary report the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC announced that U S life expectancy at birth had dropped to 76 4 years in 2021 73 2 years for men and 79 1 years for women down 0 9 years from 2020 This was the second year of overall decline and the chief causes listed were the COVID 19 pandemic accidents drug overdoses heart and liver disease and suicides 448 449 Life expectancy was highest among Asians and Hispanics and lowest among Blacks and American Indian Alaskan Native AIAN peoples 450 451 Starting in 1998 the average life expectancy in the U S fell behind that of other wealthy industrialized countries and Americans health disadvantage gap has been increasing ever since 452 The U S also has one of the highest suicide rates among high income countries 453 and approximately one third of the U S adult population is obese and another third is overweight 454 In 2010 coronary artery disease lung cancer stroke chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and traffic collisions caused the most years of life lost in the U S Low back pain depression musculoskeletal disorders neck pain and anxiety caused the most years lost to disability The most harmful risk factors were poor diet tobacco smoking obesity high blood pressure high blood sugar physical inactivity and alcohol consumption Alzheimer s disease substance use disorders kidney disease cancer and falls caused the most additional years of life lost over their age adjusted 1990 per capita rates 455 Teenage pregnancy and abortion rates in the U S are substantially higher than in other Western nations especially among blacks and Hispanics 456 The U S health care system far outspends that of any other nation measured both in per capita spending and as a percentage of GDP but attains worse health care outcomes when compared to peer nations 457 The United States is the only developed nation without a system of universal health care and a significant proportion of the population that does not carry health insurance 458 The U S however is a global leader in medical innovation measured either in terms of revenue or the number of new drugs and devices introduced 459 460 Government funded health care coverage for the poor Medicaid established in 1965 and for those age 65 and older Medicare begun in 1966 is available to Americans who meet the programs income or age qualifications In 2010 former President Obama passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or ACA o 461 which the CDC said that the law roughly halved the uninsured share of the population 462 and multiple studies have concluded that ACA had reduced the mortality of enrollees 463 464 465 However its legacy remains controversial 466 Culture and societyMain articles Culture of the United States and Society of the United States See also American nationalism and American civil religion The Statue of Liberty Liberty Enlightening the World a gift from France has become an iconic symbol of the American Dream 467 Americans have traditionally been characterized by a strong work ethic 468 competitiveness 469 and individualism 470 as well as a unifying belief in an American creed emphasizing liberty social equality property rights democracy equality under the law and a preference for limited government 471 Americans are extremely charitable by global standards according to a 2016 study by the Charities Aid Foundation Americans donated 1 44 of total GDP to charity the highest in the world by a large margin 472 The United States is home to a wide variety of ethnic groups traditions and values 473 474 and exerts major cultural influence on a global scale 475 476 The country has been described as a society built on a universalistic cultural frame rooted in the natural laws of science and human rights 477 The Declaration of Independence has become a well known statement on human rights particularly its second sentence We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness Stephen Lucas called it one of the best known sentences in the English language 478 with historian Joseph Ellis writing that the document contains the most potent and consequential words in American history 479 The passage has since came to represent a moral standard to which the United States should strive This view was notably promoted by Lincoln who considered it to be the foundation of his political philosophy and argued that it is a statement of principles through which the Constitution should be interpreted 480 126 Aside from the Native American Native Hawaiian and Native Alaskan populations nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated or were imported as slaves within the past five centuries 481 Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa 473 482 More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as a homogenizing melting pot and a heterogeneous salad bowl with immigrants contributing to and often assimilating into mainstream American culture 473 Nevertheless there is a high degree of social inequality related to race 483 and wealth 484 The American Dream or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility plays a key role in attracting immigrants 485 Whether this perception is accurate has been a topic of debate 486 487 488 While mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society 489 scholars identify significant differences between the country s social classes affecting socialization language and values 490 Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomic achievement but being ordinary or average is promoted by some as a noble condition 491 The United States has been considered to have the strongest protections of free speech of any country in the world under the First Amendment 492 with the Supreme Court ruling that flag desecration hate speech blasphemy and lese majesty are all forms of protected expression 493 494 495 A 2016 Pew Research Center poll found that Americans were the most supportive of free expression of any polity measured 496 They were also found to be the most supportive of freedom of the press and the right to use the internet without government censorship 497 It is a socially progressive country 498 with permissive attitudes surrounding human sexuality 499 LGBT rights are among the most advanced in the world 500 499 with public opinion and jurisprudence on the issue changing significantly since the late 1980s 501 A late 2022 Grinnell College poll found that 74 of Americans agreed that same sex marriage should be a guaranteed right while 13 disagreed 502 503 Approval of same sex marriage is higher in younger generations 504 among 18 34 year olds 76 are in favor of legal recognition and 7 oppose 505 In 2015 the Supreme Court ruled that same sex marriage bans were unconstitutional 506 Literature and visual arts Main articles American literature American philosophy Architecture of the United States and Visual art of the United States Mark Twain American author and humorist In the 18th and early 19th centuries American art and literature took most of their cues from Europe contributing to Western culture Writers such as Washington Irving Nathaniel Hawthorne Edgar Allan Poe and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the 19th century Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century s second half Emily Dickinson virtually unknown during her lifetime is recognized as an essential American poet 507 A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character such as Herman Melville s Moby Dick 1851 Twain s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1885 F Scott Fitzgerald s The Great Gatsby 1925 and Harper Lee s To Kill a Mockingbird 1960 may be dubbed the Great American Novel 508 Thirteen U S citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature William Faulkner Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck are often named among the most influential writers of the 20th century 509 The Beat Generation writers opened up new literary approaches as have postmodernist authors such as John Barth Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo 510 In the visual arts the Hudson River School was a mid 19th century movement in the tradition of European naturalism The 1913 Armory Show in New York City an exhibition of European modernist art shocked the public and transformed the U S art scene 511 Georgia O Keeffe Marsden Hartley and others experimented with new individualistic styles Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein developed largely in the United States The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has brought fame to American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright Philip Johnson and Frank Gehry 512 Americans have long been important in the modern artistic medium of photography with major photographers including Alfred Stieglitz Edward Steichen Edward Weston and Ansel Adams 513 Cinema and theater Main articles Cinema of the United States and Theater in the United States The Hollywood Sign in Los Angeles California Hollywood a northern district of Los Angeles California is the leader in motion picture production and the most recognizable movie industry in the world 514 515 516 The major film studios of the United States are the primary source of the most commercially successful and most ticket selling movies in the world 517 518 The world s first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City in 1894 using the Kinetoscope 519 Since the early 20th century the U S film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood although in the 21st century an increasing number of films are not made there and film companies have been subject to the forces of globalization 520 The Academy Awards popularly known as the Oscars have been held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929 521 and the Golden Globe Awards have been held annually since January 1944 522 Director D W Griffith an American filmmaker during the silent film period was central to the development of film grammar and producer entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising 523 Directors such as John Ford redefined the image of the American Old West and like others such as John Huston broadened the possibilities of cinema with location shooting The industry enjoyed its golden years in what is commonly referred to as the Golden Age of Hollywood from the early sound period until the early 1960s 524 with screen actors such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe becoming iconic figures 525 526 In the 1970s New Hollywood or the Hollywood Renaissance 527 was defined by grittier films influenced by French and Italian realist pictures of the post war period 528 Theater in the United States derives from the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the British theater 529 The central hub of the American theater scene has been Manhattan with its divisions of Broadway off Broadway and off off Broadway 530 Many movie and television stars have gotten their big break working in New York productions Outside New York City many cities have professional regional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons with some works being produced regionally with hopes of eventually moving to New York The biggest budget theatrical productions are musicals U S theater also has an active community theater culture which relies mainly on local volunteers who may not be actively pursuing a theatrical career 531 Music Main article Music of the United States The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville Tennessee American folk music encompasses numerous music genres variously known as traditional music traditional folk music contemporary folk music or roots music Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles Mainland Europe or Africa 532 Among America s earliest composers was a man named William Billings who born in Boston composed patriotic hymns in the 1770s 533 Billings was a part of the First New England School who dominated American music during its earliest stages Anthony Heinrich was the most prominent composer before the Civil War From the mid to late 1800s John Philip Sousa of the late Romantic era composed numerous military songs particularly marches and is regarded as one of America s greatest composers 534 The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African American music have significantly influenced American music at large distinguishing it from European and African traditions Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is known as old time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences Jazz was developed by innovators such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington early in the 20th century Country music developed in the 1920s and rhythm and blues in the 1940s 535 Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry were among the pioneers of rock and roll in the mid 1950s Rock bands such as Metallica the Eagles and Aerosmith are among the highest grossing in worldwide sales 536 537 538 In the 1960s Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of America s most celebrated songwriters 539 Mid 20th century American pop stars such as Bing Crosby Frank Sinatra 540 and Elvis Presley became global celebrities 535 as have artists of the late 20th century such as Prince Michael Jackson Madonna Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey 541 542 Mass media Further information Mass media in the United States See also Newspapers in the United States Television in the United States Internet in the United States Radio in the United States and Video games in the United States The Comcast Center in Philadelphia headquarters of the nation s largest multinational telecommunications conglomerate 543 The four major broadcasters in the U S are the National Broadcasting Company NBC Columbia Broadcasting System CBS American Broadcasting Company ABC and Fox Broadcasting Company FOX The four major broadcast television networks are all commercial entities Cable television offers hundreds of channels catering to a variety of niches 544 As of 2021 update about 83 of Americans over age 12 listen to broadcast radio while about 41 listen to podcasts 545 As of September 30 2014 update there are 15 433 licensed full power radio stations in the U S according to the U S Federal Communications Commission FCC 546 Much of the public radio broadcasting is supplied by NPR incorporated in February 1970 under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 547 Well known U S newspapers include The Wall Street Journal The New York Times and USA Today 548 More than 800 publications are produced in Spanish the second most commonly used language in the United States behind English 549 550 With very few exceptions all the newspapers in the U S are privately owned either by large chains such as Gannett or McClatchy which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers by small chains that own a handful of papers or in a situation that is increasingly rare by individuals or families Major cities often have alternative newspapers to complement the mainstream daily papers such as New York City s The Village Voice or Los Angeles LA Weekly The five most popular websites used in the U S are Google YouTube Amazon Yahoo and Facebook 551 The American video game industry is the world s 2nd largest by revenue 552 It generated 90 billion in annual economic output in 2020 Furthermore the video game industry contributed 12 6 billion in federal state and municipal taxes annually 553 Some of the largest video game companies like Activision Blizzard Xbox Sony Interactive Entertainment Rockstar Games and Electronic Arts are based in the United States 554 Some of the most popular and best selling video games like The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Diablo III are made by American developers 555 The American video gaming business is still a significant employer More than 143 000 individuals are employed directly and indirectly by video game companies throughout 50 states The national compensation for direct workers is 2 9 billion or an average wage of 121 000 556 Food Main article Cuisine of the United States Roasted turkey is a traditional Thanksgiving dinner dish and is usually the main entree 557 Early settlers were introduced by Native Americans to such indigenous non European foods as turkey sweet potatoes corn squash and maple syrup They and later immigrants combined these with foods they had known such as wheat flour 558 beef and milk to create a distinctive American cuisine 559 560 Homegrown foods are part of a shared national menu on one of America s most popular holidays Thanksgiving when many Americans make or purchase traditional foods to celebrate the occasion 561 The American fast food industry the world s largest 562 pioneered the drive through format in the 1940s 563 Characteristic American dishes such as apple pie fried chicken doughnuts french fries macaroni and cheese ice cream pizza hamburgers and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various immigrants 564 565 Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed 566 Americans drink three times as much coffee as tea 567 Marketing by U S industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk standard breakfast beverages 568 569 Sports Main article Sports in the United States See also Professional sports leagues in the United States and National Collegiate Athletic Association American football is the most popular sport in the United States The most popular sports in the U S are American football basketball baseball and ice hockey 570 While most major U S sports such as baseball and American football have evolved out of European practices basketball volleyball skateboarding and snowboarding are American inventions some of which have become popular worldwide 571 Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate European contact 572 The market for professional sports in the United States is roughly 69 billion roughly 50 larger than that of all of Europe the Middle East and Africa combined 573 American football is by several measures the most popular spectator sport in the United States 574 the National Football League NFL has the highest average attendance of any sports league in the world and the Super Bowl is watched by tens of millions globally 575 Baseball has been regarded as the U S national sport since the late 19th century with Major League Baseball being the top league Basketball and ice hockey are the country s next two most popular professional team sports with the top leagues being the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League The most watched individual sports in the U S are golf and auto racing particularly NASCAR and IndyCar 576 577 Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States The 1904 Summer Olympics in St Louis Missouri were the first ever Olympic Games held outside of Europe 578 The Olympic Games will be held in the U S for a ninth time when Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics As of 2021 update the United States has won 2 629 medals at the Summer Olympic Games more than any other country and 330 in the Winter Olympic Games the second most behind Norway 579 In soccer the men s national soccer team qualified for eleven World Cups and the women s team has won the FIFA Women s World Cup four times 580 The United States hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup and will host the 2026 FIFA World Cup along with Canada and Mexico On the collegiate level earnings for the member institutions exceed 1 billion annually 581 and college football and basketball attract large audiences as the NCAA Final Four is one of the most watched sporting events 582 See alsoIndex of United States related articles Lists of U S state topics Outline of the United StatesNotes The historical and informal demonym Yankee has been applied to Americans New Englanders or northeasterners since the 18th century a b c At 3 531 900 sq mi 9 147 590 km2 the United States is the third largest country in the world by land area behind Russia and China By total area land and water it is the third largest behind Russia and Canada if its coastal and territorial water areas are included However if only its internal waters are included bays sounds rivers lakes and the Great Lakes the U S is the fourth largest after Russia Canada and China Coastal territorial waters included 3 796 742 sq mi 9 833 517 km2 17 Only internal waters included 3 696 100 sq mi 9 572 900 km2 18 Excludes Puerto Rico and the other unincorporated islands because they are counted separately in U S census statistics See Time in the United States for details about laws governing time zones in the United States See Date and time notation in the United States A single jurisdiction the U S Virgin Islands uses left hand traffic The five major territories are American Samoa Guam the Northern Mariana Islands Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands There are eleven smaller island areas without permanent populations Baker Island Howland Island Jarvis Island Johnston Atoll Kingman Reef Midway Atoll and Palmyra Atoll U S sovereignty over Bajo Nuevo Bank Navassa Island Serranilla Bank and Wake Island is disputed 16 The United States has a maritime border with the British Virgin Islands a British territory since the BVI borders the U S Virgin Islands 19 BVI is a British Overseas Territory but itself is not a part of the United Kingdom 20 Puerto Rico has a maritime border with the Dominican Republic 21 American Samoa has a maritime border with the Cook Islands maintained under the Cook Islands United States Maritime Boundary Treaty 22 23 American Samoa also has maritime borders with independent Samoa and Niue 24 The U S Census Bureau provides a continuously updated but unofficial population clock in addition to its decennial census and annual population estimates 1 New Hampshire Massachusetts Connecticut Rhode Island New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware Maryland Virginia North Carolina South Carolina and Georgia John Adams Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Franklin Roger Sherman and Robert R Livingston People born in American Samoa are non citizen U S nationals unless one of their parents is a U S citizen 263 In 2019 a court ruled that American Samoans are U S citizens but the litigation is ongoing 264 265 This figure like most official data for the United States as a whole excludes the five unincorporated territories Puerto Rico Guam the U S Virgin Islands American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands and minor island possessions Inupiaq Siberian Yupik Central Alaskan Yup ik Alutiiq Unanga Aleut Denaʼina Deg Xinag Holikachuk Koyukon Upper Kuskokwim Gwichʼin Tanana Upper Tanana Tanacross Han Ahtna Eyak Tlingit Haida and Tsimshian Also known less formally as ObamacareReferences 36 U S C 302 The Great Seal of the United States PDF U S Department of State Bureau of Public Affairs 2003 Retrieved February 12 2020 An Act To make The Star Spangled Banner the national anthem of the United States of America H R 14 Act of March 3 1931 71st United States Congress 2020 Census Illuminates Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Country United States Census Retrieved August 13 2021 Race and Ethnicity in the United States 2010 Census and 2020 Census United States Census Retrieved August 13 2021 A Breakdown of 2020 Census Demographic Data NPR August 13 2021 About Three in Ten U S Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated Measuring Religion in Pew Research Center s American Trends Panel Pew Research Center December 14 2021 Retrieved December 21 2021 Compton s Pictured Encyclopedia and Fact index Ohio 1963 p 336 Areas of the 50 states and the District of Columbia but not Puerto Rico nor other island territories per State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates Census gov August 2010 Retrieved March 31 2020 reflect base feature updates made in the MAF TIGER database through August 2010 Surface water and surface water change Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development OECD 2015 Retrieved October 11 2020 Bureau US Census Growth in U S Population Shows Early Indication of Recovery Amid COVID 19 Pandemic Census gov Retrieved December 24 2022 Census Bureau s 2020 Population Count United States Census Retrieved April 26 2021 The 2020 census is as of April 1 2020 a b c d e f World Economic Outlook Database October 2022 IMF org International Monetary Fund October 2022 Retrieved October 11 2022 Bureau US Census Income and Poverty in the United States 2020 Table A 3 Census gov Retrieved July 26 2022 Human Development Report 2021 2022 PDF United Nations Development Programme September 8 2022 Retrieved September 8 2022 U S State Department Common Core Document to U N Committee on Human Rights December 30 2011 Item 22 27 80 And U S General Accounting Office Report U S Insular Areas application of the U S Constitution Archived November 3 2013 at the Wayback Machine November 1997 pp 1 6 39n Both viewed April 6 2016 China CIA World Factbook Retrieved June 10 2016 United States Encyclopaedia Britannica Archived from the original on December 19 2013 Retrieved January 31 2010 United States Virgin Islands Encyclopaedia Britannica Online ed Archived from the original on April 29 2020 Retrieved July 3 2020 which also contains its near neighbour the British Virgin Islands United Kingdom Overseas Territories Toponymic Information PDF Present Committee on Geographic Names Retrieved January 7 2023 Hosted on the Government of the United Kingdom website Puerto Rico Encyclopaedia Britannica Online ed Archived from the original on July 2 2020 Retrieved July 3 2020 Anderson Ewan W 2003 International Boundaries A Geopolitical Atlas Routledge New York ISBN 9781579583750 OCLC 54061586 Charney Jonathan I David A Colson Robert W Smith 2005 International Maritime Boundaries 5 vols Hotei Publishing Leiden Pacific Maritime Boundaries pacgeo org Archived from the original on July 31 2020 Retrieved July 3 2020 Sider 2007 p 226 Szalay Jessie September 20 2017 Amerigo Vespucci Facts Biography amp Naming of America Live Science Retrieved June 23 2019 Jonathan Cohen The Naming of America Fragments We ve Shored Against Ourselves Archived from the original on October 6 2018 Retrieved February 3 2014 DeLear Byron July 4 2013 Who coined United States of America Mystery might have intriguing answer Historians have long tried to pinpoint exactly when the name United States of America was first used and by whom This latest find comes in a letter that Stephen Moylan Esq wrote to Col Joseph Reed from the Continental Army Headquarters in Cambridge Mass during the siege of Boston The two men lived with Washington in Cambridge with Reed serving as Washington s favorite military secretary and Moylan fulfilling the role during Reed s absence Christian Science Monitor Boston MA Touba Mariam November 5 2014 Who Coined the Phrase United States of America You May Never Guess Here on January 2 1776 seven months before the Declaration of Independence and a week before the publication of Paine s Common Sense Stephen Moylan an acting secretary to General George Washington spells it out I should like vastly to go with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain to seek foreign assistance for the cause New York Historical Society Museum amp Library Fay John July 15 2016 The forgotten Irishman who named the United States of America According to the NY Historical Society Stephen Moylan was the man responsible for the earliest documented use of the phrase United States of America But who was Stephen Moylan IrishCentral com To the inhabitants of Virginia by A PLANTER Dixon and Hunter s April 6 1776 Williamsburg Virginia Letter is also included in Peter Force s American Archives The Virginia Gazette Vol 5 no 1287 Archived from the original on December 19 2014 a b c Safire 2003 p 199 Mostert 2005 p 18 Wilson Kenneth G 1993 The Columbia guide to standard American English New York Columbia University Press pp 27 28 ISBN 978 0 231 06989 2 Erlandson Rick amp Vellanoweth 2008 p 19 Savage 2011 p 55 Haviland Walrath amp Prins 2013 p 219 Waters amp Stafford 2007 pp 1122 1126 Flannery 2015 pp 173 185 Gelo 2018 pp 79 80 Lockard 2010 p 315 Martinez Sage amp Ono 2016 p 4 Fagan 2016 p 390 Stoltz Julie Ann 2006 Book Review of The Continuance An Algonquian Peoples Seminar Selected Research Papers 2000 edited by Shirley Dunn 2004 New York State Education Department Albany New York 144 pages 19 95 paper Northeast Historical Archaeology 35 1 201 202 doi 10 22191 neha vol35 iss1 30 ISSN 0048 0738 Raster Amanda Hill Christina Gish May 24 2016 The dispute over wild rice an investigation of treaty agreements and Ojibwe food sovereignty Agriculture and Human Values 34 2 267 281 doi 10 1007 s10460 016 9703 6 ISSN 0889 048X S2CID 55940408 Dean R Snow 1994 The Iroquois Blackwell Publishers Ltd ISBN 978 1 55786 938 8 Retrieved July 16 2010 a b c Perdue amp Green 2005 p 40 a b Haines Haines amp Steckel 2000 p 12 Thornton 1998 p 34 The New England Colonies and the Native Americans National Geographic Society History Retrieved January 7 2023 Forgotten History How The New England Colonists Embraced The Slave Trade NPR June 21 2016 Retrieved January 7 2023 Opere Fernando 2008 Indian Captivity in Spanish America Frontier Narratives University of Virginia Press p 1 ISBN 978 0 8139 2587 5 Kiger Patrick J How St Augustine Became the First European Settlement in America History Retrieved January 7 2023 Morison Samuel Eliot 1971 The European Discovery of America The Northern Voyages New York Oxford University Press p 490 ISBN 0 19 215941 0 Not So Fast Jamestown St Augustine Was Here First NPR February 28 2015 Retrieved March 5 2021 Petto Christine Marie 2007 When France Was King of Cartography The Patronage and Production of Maps in Early Modern France Lexington Books p 125 ISBN 978 0 7391 6247 7 Seelye James E Jr Selby Shawn 2018 Shaping North America From Exploration to the American Revolution 3 volumes ABC CLIO p 344 ISBN 978 1 4408 3669 5 Robert Neelly Bellah Richard Madsen William M Sullivan Ann Swidler Steven M Tipton 1985 Habits of the Heart Individualism and Commitment in American Life University of California Press p 220 ISBN 978 0 520 05388 5 OL 7708974M Remini 2007 pp 2 3 Johnson 1997 pp 26 30 Cook Noble 1998 Born to Die Disease and New World Conquest 1492 1650 Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 62730 6 Treuer David The new book The Other Slavery will make you rethink American history Los Angeles Times Retrieved October 10 2019 Stannard 1993 p xii The Cambridge encyclopedia of human paleopathology Archived February 8 2016 at the Wayback Machine Arthur C Aufderheide Conrado Rodriguez Martin Odin Langsjoen 1998 Cambridge University Press p 205 ISBN 978 0 521 55203 5 Bianchine Russo 1992 pp 225 232 Ripper 2008 p 6 Ripper 2008 p 5 Calloway 1998 p 55 Joseph 2016 p 590 Thomas Hugh 1997 The Slave Trade The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440 1870 Simon and Schuster pp 516 ISBN 0 684 83565 7 Quirk 2011 p 195 Lien 1913 p 522 Davis 1996 p 7 Bilhartz Terry D Elliott Alan C 2007 Currents in American History A Brief History of the United States M E Sharpe ISBN 978 0 7656 1817 7 Wood Gordon S 1998 The Creation of the American Republic 1776 1787 UNC Press Books p 263 ISBN 978 0 8078 4723 7 Ratcliff 2013 p 220 sfn error no target CITEREFRatcliff2013 help Constitutional Rights Foundation www crf usa org The Colonial Experience ushistory org www ushistory org Voting in Early America www slaveryandremembrance org Walton 2009 pp 38 39 Foner Eric 1998 The Story of American Freedom 1st ed W W Norton pp 4 5 ISBN 978 0 393 04665 6 story of American freedom Walton 2009 p 35 Otis James 1763 The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved ISBN 9780665526787 Reid John Phillip March 2003 Constitutional History of the American Revolution ISBN 9780299139841 Recreating the American Republic Charles A Kromkowski Retrieved on 2013 07 15 Humphrey Carol Sue 2003 The Revolutionary Era Primary Documents on Events from 1776 To 1800 Greenwood Publishing pp 8 10 ISBN 978 0 313 32083 5 The First Continental Congress 1774 Aoc gov Retrieved January 13 2023 Congress creates the Continental Association HISTORY November 9 2009 Retrieved January 13 2023 a b Fabian Young Alfred Nash Gary B Raphael Ray 2011 Revolutionary Founders Rebels Radicals and Reformers in the Making of the Nation Random House Digital pp 4 7 ISBN 978 0 307 27110 5 Miller Hunter ed British American Diplomacy The Paris Peace Treaty of September 30 1783 The Avalon Project at Yale Law School Boyer 2007 pp 192 193 Wait Eugene M 1999 America and the War of 1812 Nova Publishers p 78 ISBN 978 1 56072 644 9 Cogliano Francis D 2008 Thomas Jefferson Reputation and Legacy University of Virginia Press p 219 ISBN 978 0 8139 2733 6 Walton 2009 p 43 Gordon 2004 pp 27 29 Clark Mary Ann May 2012 Then We ll Sing a New Song African Influences on America s Religious Landscape Rowman amp Littlefield p 47 ISBN 978 1 4422 0881 0 Heinemann Ronald L et al Old Dominion New Commonwealth a history of Virginia 1607 2007 2007 ISBN 978 0 8139 2609 4 p 197 a b Carlisle Rodney P Golson J Geoffrey 2007 Manifest destiny and the expansion of America Turning Points in History Series Santa Barbara Calif ABC CLIO p 238 ISBN 978 1 85109 834 7 OCLC 659807062 a b Morrison Michael A April 28 1997 Slavery and the American West The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War University of North Carolina Press pp 13 21 ISBN 978 0 8078 4796 1 Louisiana Purchase PDF National Park Service Retrieved March 1 2011 Klose Nelson Jones Robert F 1994 United States History to 1877 Barron s Educational Series p 150 ISBN 978 0 8120 1834 9 Kemp Roger L 2010 Documents of American Democracy A Collection of Essential Works McFarland p 180 ISBN 978 0 7864 4210 2 Retrieved October 25 2015 Michno Gregory 2003 Encyclopedia of Indian Wars Western Battles and Skirmishes 1850 1890 Mountain Press Publishing ISBN 978 0 87842 468 9 Billington Ray Allen Ridge Martin 2001 Westward Expansion A History of the American Frontier UNM Press p 22 ISBN 978 0 8263 1981 4 McIlwraith Thomas F Muller Edward K 2001 North America The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent Rowman amp Littlefield p 61 ISBN 978 0 7425 0019 8 Retrieved October 25 2015 Wolf Jessica Revealing the history of genocide against California s Native Americans UCLA Newsroom Retrieved July 8 2018 Rawls James J 1999 A Golden State Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California University of California Press p 20 ISBN 978 0 520 21771 3 Paul Frymer Building an American Empire The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion Princeton Princeton University Press 2017 Stuart Murray 2004 Atlas of American Military History Infobase Publishing p 76 ISBN 978 1 4381 3025 5 Retrieved October 25 2015 Harold T Lewis 2001 Christian Social Witness Rowman amp Littlefield p 53 ISBN 978 1 56101 188 9 O Brien Patrick Karl 2002 Atlas of World History Concise ed New York NY Oxford University Press p 184 ISBN 978 0 19 521921 0 Vinovskis Maris 1990 Toward A Social History of the American Civil War Exploratory Essays Cambridge New York Cambridge University Press p 4 ISBN 978 0 521 39559 5 Shearer Davis Bowman 1993 Masters and Lords Mid 19th Century U S Planters and Prussian Junkers Oxford UP p 221 ISBN 978 0 19 536394 4 Jason E Pierce 2016 Making the White Man s West Whiteness and the Creation of the American West University Press of Colorado p 256 ISBN 978 1 60732 396 9 Marie Price Lisa Benton Short 2008 Migrants to the Metropolis The Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities Syracuse University Press p 51 ISBN 978 0 8156 3186 6 John Powell 2009 Encyclopedia of North American Immigration Infobase Publishing p 74 ISBN 978 1 4381 1012 7 Retrieved October 25 2015 Black Jeremy 2011 Fighting for America The Struggle for Mastery in North America 1519 1871 Indiana University Press p 275 ISBN 978 0 253 35660 4 Winchester 2013 pp 351 385 Purchase of Alaska 1867 Office of the Historian U S Department of State Retrieved December 23 2014 The Spanish American War 1898 Office of the Historian U S Department of State Retrieved December 24 2014 Ryden George Herbert The Foreign Policy of the United States in Relation to Samoa New York Octagon Books 1975 Virgin Islands History Vinow com Retrieved January 5 2018 Kirkland Edward Industry Comes of Age Business Labor and Public Policy 1961 ed pp 400 405 Tindall George Brown and Shi David E 2012 America A Narrative History Brief Ninth Edition Vol 2 W W Norton amp Company ISBN 978 0 393 91267 8 p 589 a b Fraser Steve 2015 The Age of Acquiescence The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power Little Brown and Company p 66 ISBN 978 0 316 18543 1 Zinn 2005 pp 321 357 McDuffie Jerome Piggrem Gary Wayne Woodworth Steven E 2005 U S History Super Review Piscataway NJ Research amp Education Association p 418 ISBN 978 0 7386 0070 3 The Great Migration 1910 1970 May 20 2021 Paige Meltzer The Pulse and Conscience of America The General Federation and Women s Citizenship 1945 1960 Frontiers A Journal of Women Studies 2009 Vol 30 Issue 3 pp 52 76 James Timberlake Prohibition and the Progressive Movement 1900 1920 Harvard UP 1963 George B Tindall Business Progressivism Southern Politics in the Twenties South Atlantic Quarterly 62 Winter 1963 92 106 Voris Jacqueline Van 1996 Carrie Chapman Catt A Public Life Women and Peace Series New York City Feminist Press at CUNY p vii ISBN 978 1 55861 139 9 Carrie Chapmann Catt led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920 Catt was one of the best known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century and was on all lists of famous American women Winchester 2013 pp 410 411 Axinn June Stern Mark J 2007 Social Welfare A History of the American Response to Need 7th ed Boston Allyn amp Bacon ISBN 978 0 205 52215 6 James Noble Gregory 1991 American Exodus The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 507136 8 Retrieved October 25 2015 Mass Exodus From the Plains American Experience WGBH Educational Foundation 2013 Retrieved October 5 2014 Fanslow Robin A April 6 1997 The Migrant Experience American Folklore Center Library of Congress Retrieved October 5 2014 Walter J Stein 1973 California and the Dust Bowl Migration Greenwood Press ISBN 978 0 8371 6267 6 Retrieved October 25 2015 The official WRA record from 1946 state it was 120 000 people See War Relocation Authority 1946 The Evacuated People A Quantitative Study p 8 This number does not include people held in other camps such as those run by the DoJ or U S Army Other sources may give numbers slightly more or less than 120 000 Yamasaki Mitch Pearl Harbor and America s Entry into World War II A Documentary History PDF World War II Internment in Hawaii Archived from the original PDF on December 13 2014 Retrieved January 14 2015 Stoler Mark A George C Marshall and the Europe First Strategy 1939 1951 A Study in Diplomatic as well as Military History PDF Retrieved April 4 2016 Kelly Brian The Four Policemen and Postwar Planning 1943 1945 The Collision of Realist and Idealist Perspectives Retrieved June 21 2014 Hoopes amp Brinkley 1997 p 100 Gaddis 1972 p 25 Kennedy Paul 1989 The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers New York Vintage p 358 ISBN 978 0 679 72019 5 The United States and the Founding of the United Nations August 1941 October 1945 U S Dept of State Bureau of Public Affairs Office of the Historian October 2005 Retrieved June 11 2007 Why did Japan surrender in World War II The Japan Times The Japan Times Retrieved February 8 2017 Pacific War Research Society 2006 Japan s Longest Day New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 4 7700 2887 7 See Frankenfeld Peter 2012 A Marshall Plan for Greece The European Union and the Financial Crisis in Greece A Theoretical and Political Analysis in the Global World Against a Background of Regional Integration Table 1 European Recovery Programme Marshall Plan million Prace i Materialy Instytutu Handlu Zagranicznego Uniwersytetu Gdanskiego 31 1 69 ISSN 2300 6153 Wagg Stephen Andrews David 2012 East Plays West Sport and the Cold War Routledge p 11 ISBN 978 1 134 24167 5 a b Blakemore Erin March 22 2019 What was the Cold War National Geographic Retrieved August 28 2020 Blakeley 2009 p 92 a b Collins Michael 1988 Liftoff The Story of America s Adventure in Space New York Grove Press ISBN 9780802110114 Chapman Jessica M August 5 2016 Origins of the Vietnam War Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 acrefore 9780199329175 013 353 ISBN 978 0 19 932917 5 Retrieved August 28 2020 Winchester 2013 pp 305 308 Blas Elisheva The Dwight D Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways PDF societyforhistoryeducation org Society for History Education Retrieved January 19 2015 Richard Lightner 2004 Hawaiian History An Annotated Bibliography Greenwood Publishing Group p 141 ISBN 978 0 313 28233 1 The Civil Rights Movement PBS org Retrieved January 5 2019 Social Security ssa gov Retrieved October 25 2015 Dallek Robert 2004 Lyndon B Johnson Portrait of a President Oxford University Press p 169 ISBN 978 0 19 515920 2 Our Documents Civil Rights Act 1964 United States Department of Justice Retrieved July 28 2010 Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration Bill Liberty Island New York October 3 1965 Archived from the original on May 16 2016 Retrieved January 1 2012 Levy Daniel January 19 2018 Behind the Protests Against the Vietnam War in 1968 Time Magazine Retrieved May 5 2021 Staff August 25 2022 Playboy American Magazine Encyclopedia Britannica Retrieved February 2 2023 the so called sexual revolution in the United States in the 1960s marked by greatly more permissive attitudes toward sexual interest and activity than had been prevalent in earlier generations Julia Goicichea August 16 2017 Why New York City Is a Major Destination for LGBT Travelers The Culture Trip Retrieved July 15 2022 Brief History of the Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement in the U S University of Kentucky Retrieved July 15 2022 Nell Frizzell June 28 2013 Feature How the Stonewall riots started the LGBT rights movement Pink News UK Retrieved July 15 2022 Stonewall riots Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved July 15 2022 span, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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