The country continues to sustain an economic life that is more diversified than any other on Earth, providing the majority of its people with one of the world’s highest standards of living. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has provided security at most major airports since 2001. The western flanks of the Interior Lowlands are the Great Plains, a territory of awesome bulk that spans the full distance between Canada and Mexico in a swath nearly 500 miles (800 km) wide. The Great Plains were built by successive layers of poorly cemented sand, silt, and gravel—debris laid down by parallel east-flowing streams from the Rocky Mountains.
Clashes with the British Crown over taxation and lack of parliamentary representation sparked the American Revolution, leading to the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Victory in the 1775–1783 Revolutionary War brought international recognition of U.S. sovereignty and fueled westward expansion, dispossessing native inhabitants. As more states were admitted, a North–South division over slavery led the Confederate States of America to attempt secession and fight the Union in the 1861–1865 American Civil War. With the United States’ victory and reunification, slavery was abolished nationally.
United States (US) Economy
As the Mesabi iron was a major source of America’s industrial wealth, its agricultural prosperity has been rooted in Midwestern loess. Besides the 48 conterminous states that occupy the middle latitudes of the continent, the United States includes the state of Alaska, at the northwestern extreme of North America, and the island state of Hawaii, in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The conterminous states are bounded on the north by Canada, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean.
Pennsylvania’s largest city is known as the home of the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and the “Rocky” statue. Arizona’s Native American History Indigenous hunter-gatherers arrived in the area now known as Arizona more than 12,000 years ago. Today, the state has 22 federally-recognized Native American tribes, including the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Tohono O’odh… Kentucky became the first U.S. state west of the Appalachian Mountains in 1792. Minnesota is the 32nd state to join the Union and is the most northerly of the 48 conterminous U.S. states.
George Washington picked out the location and laid out a perfect diamond shape for the city, spanning parts of Maryland and Virginia. But a looming fight over slavery caused the Virginia side to leave the District and return to its home state, giving D.C. The last time a sitting president called NYC home, things were very different. Boston has played a central role in U.S. history, from its settlement by the Puritans, to its American Revolutionary battles to its storied universities.
Making up more than a third of global military spending, the country has one of the strongest militaries and is a designated nuclear state. A member of numerous international organizations, the U.S. plays a major role in global political, cultural, economic, and military affairs. South of the Adirondack Mountains and the Superior Upland lies the boundary between crystalline and sedimentary rocks; abruptly, everything is different. The core of this sedimentary region—the heartland of the United States—is the great Central Lowland, which stretches for 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) from New York to central Texas and north another 1,000 miles to the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. To some, the landscape may seem dull, for heights of more than 2,000 feet (600 meters) are unusual, and truly rough terrain is almost lacking.
True flatness is rare, although the High Plains of western Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and eastern Colorado come close. More commonly, the land is broadly rolling, and parts of the northern plains are sharply dissected into badlands. The center of the conterminous United States is a great sprawling interior lowland, reaching from the ancient shield of central Canada on the north to the Gulf of Mexico on the south. To east and west this lowland rises, first gradually and then abruptly, to mountain ranges that divide it from the sea on both sides. The Appalachian Mountains on the east are low, almost unbroken, and in the main set well back from the Atlantic. From New York to the Mexican border stretches the low Coastal Plain, which faces the ocean along a swampy, convoluted coast.
- Political units in association with the United States include Puerto Rico, discussed in the article Puerto Rico, and several Pacific islands, discussed in Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa.
- In the 20th century the United States emerged as a world power, and since World War II it has been one of the preeminent powers.
- Shaped by centuries of immigration, the culture of the U.S. is diverse and globally influential.
North Carolina
- See how the Mexican government tried to stop American immigration and the practice of slavery, leading to the Texas revolution and the battle of the Alamo.
- See how its eventual commonwealth status, the 2006 recession, and 2017’s Hurricane Maria have caused political and economic upheaval.
- Its largest city, Detroit, is home to the American auto industry and is the birthplace of Motown Records.
- When California was still a part of Mexico, a group of American settlers rebelled against the Mexican government and proclaimed California an independent republic—for one month.
- However, the depletion of its resources, the contamination of its environment, and the continuing social and economic inequality that perpetuates areas of poverty and blight all threaten the fabric of the country.
In the 20th century the United States emerged as a world power, and since World War II it has been one of the preeminent powers. It has not accepted this mantle easily nor always carried it willingly; the principles and ideals of its founders have been tested by the pressures and exigencies of its dominant status. The United States still offers its residents opportunities for unparalleled personal advancement and wealth. However, the depletion of its resources, the contamination of its environment, and the continuing social and economic inequality that perpetuates areas of poverty and blight all threaten the fabric of the country.
Median age
The state is known as a premiere skiing destination, with mountains near its capital Salt Lake City receiving an average of 500 inches of snow annually. Louisiana became a U.S. territory as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and was admitted to the Union in 1812. Interesting Facts English colonists led by George Popham established Fort St. George in Maine in 1607, the same year Jamestown, Virginia, was founded. Overwhelmed by the harsh climate and left leaderless after Popham’s death, the colonists returned to E… With the discovery of gold in 1848, thousands of prospectors poured into California.
Coastline
Long-distance intercity travel is provided primarily by airlines, but travel by rail is more common along the Northeast Corridor, the only high-speed rail in the U.S. that meets international standards. Amtrak, the country’s government-sponsored national passenger rail company, has a relatively sparse network compared to that of Western European countries. Service is concentrated in the Northeast, California, the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, and Virginia/Southeast. With a diverse landscape, Mississippi history is marked by its role in the Civil War, the civil rights movement and as the birthplace of the blues. Usually, however, the Appalachian Plateau is considered a subregion of the Appalachian Mountains, partly on grounds of location, partly because of geologic structure.
Landscapes are varied, however, largely as the result of glaciation that directly or indirectly affected most of the subregion. North of the Missouri–Ohio river line, the advance and readvance of continental ice left an intricate mosaic of boulders, sand, gravel, silt, and clay and a complex pattern of lakes and drainage channels, some abandoned, some still in use. The southern part of the Central Lowland is quite different, covered mostly with loess (wind-deposited silt) that us stock market holiday hours 2021 further subdued the already low relief surface. Elsewhere, especially near major rivers, postglacial streams carved the loess into rounded hills, and visitors have aptly compared their billowing shapes to the waves of the sea.
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Andrew Jackson is supposed to have remarked that the United States begins at the Alleghenies, implying that only west of the mountains, in the isolation and freedom of the great Interior Lowlands, could people finally escape Old World influences. Whether or not the lowlands constitute the country’s cultural core is debatable, but there can be no doubt that they comprise its geologic core and in many ways its geographic core as well. The major characteristic of the United States is probably its great variety. Its physical environment ranges from the Arctic to the subtropical, from the moist rain forest to the arid desert, from the rugged mountain peak to the flat prairie. Although the total population of the United States is large by world standards, its overall population density is relatively low. The country embraces some of the world’s largest urban concentrations as well as some of the most extensive areas that are almost devoid of habitation.
Public debt
From the Space Needle to the Atomium, these landmarks stand as remarkable legacies of 19th- and 20th-century global exhibitions. Hawaii became part of the union more than six decades after an illegal coup ousted the Native Hawaiian monarchy. Stretching more than 3,000 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, the United States of America is made up of 50 states, each with its own capital, traditions and history. From prehistory, though antiquity and into the 21st century, all of history’s biggest chapters. The Information Architects maintain a master list of the topics included in the corpus of Encyclopædia Britannica, and create and manage the relationships between them.
Petroleum and natural gas have been found in nearly every state between the Appalachians and the Rockies, but the Midcontinent Fields of western Texas and the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, and Kansas surpass all others. Aside from small deposits of lead and zinc, metallic minerals are of little importance. This enormous region rests upon an ancient, much-eroded platform of complex crystalline rocks that have for the most part lain undisturbed by major orogenic (mountain-building) activity for more than 600,000,000 years. Over much of central Canada, these Precambrian rocks are exposed at the surface and form the continent’s single largest topographical region, the formidable and ice-scoured Canadian Shield.