Angličtina - USA: United States of America

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

Geography and population

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

Places of interest

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

National symbols

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

History

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

Federal public holidays

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

National parks

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