Famous people of America

Geography

The USA is the fourth largest country in the world after Russia, Canada and China. It occupies the Southern part of the North America and stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. It also includes Alaska in the north and Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. In 1959 Alaska became 49th state of the USA. Alaska is America’s largest state, but very few people live there. The largest island, and the the most recent state to join the USA was Hawaii. Hawaii lies at the South-Eastern End of the chain and is almost twice at large as all other islands combined.

Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492.He was a seaman and made many sea voyages to the New World. He was born in Italy but lived in Spain for a long time. There is a nice poem about him. The title of the poem is “Lets Remember Columbus”.

In fourteen hundred and ninety two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue…

Lets sing together this old song

About the voyage that took him long,

About the sailors, those strong brave men.

Lets sing and remember them all again.

The total area of the USA is about 9 and a half million square kilometers. The USA borders on Canada in the North and on Mexico in the South. It also has a sea-border with Russia.

The USA is made up of 50 states and the District of Columbia, a special federal area, where the capital of the country, Washington, is situated. The population of the country is more than 270 million.

If we look at the map of the USA , we can see lowlands and mountains. The highest mountains are the Rocky Mountains, the Cordillera and the Sierra Nevada. The highest peak is Mount McKinley which is located in Alaska.

Part of the boundary between the USA and Canada is formed by four of the five Great Lakes. The largest of them is Lake Superior, which, as its name implies, is the highest above the sea. South of it is Lake Michigan, entirely in the United States territory. From the Lake Erie the Niagara River rushes over the famous Niagara Falls into Lake Ontario.

America’s largest rivers are the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Rio-Grande and the Columbia. The climate of the USA varies greatly. The coldest regions are in the North. The climate of the central part is continental. The South has a subtropical climate. The climate along the Pacific coast is much warmer than that of the Atlantic coast.

Economy

The USA is a highly developed industrial country. It is the world’s leading producer of copper and oil and the world’s second producer of iron ore and coal. Among the most important manufacturing industries are air-crafts, cars, textiles, radio and TV sets and etc.

Silicon Valley is the southern region in Northern California in the United States. It is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations as well as thousands of small startups. The term originally referred to the region's large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the high-tech businesses in the area; it is now generally used as a metonym for the American high-tech sector. Despite the development of other high-tech economic centers throughout the United States and the world, Silicon Valley continues to be the leading hub for high-tech innovation and development, accounting for one-third (1/3) of all of the venture capital investment in the United States.

Population

The overall population of the USA is currently more than 300 mln people. Eastern part of the country is more populated than the western part, though most of the population of the mainland USA lives on the east and west coasts.

Though mainly European and African in origin, Americans are made up from nearly all races and nations, including Chinese and native Americans. Immigration is one of the defining characteristics of America's national identity, though calling the US a 'nation of immigrants' neatly sidesteps Native Americans (already here) and African American slaves (brought against their will).

Race/Ethnicity:

White – 80%

African American – 12.8%

Asian – 4.4%

Native American and Alaskan Native – 1%

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander – 0.2%

Multiracial – 1.6%

In the past 30 years, the old notion of America as a melting pot - a stew in which immigrants' individual differences are lost in uniformity - has given way to the salad-bowl model, in which the individual pieces still retain their flavor while contributing to the whole.

Political system

The United States of America is a federal republic consisting of 50 states. Each state has its own government («state government*). In some ways the United States is like 50 small countries.

The government of the USA act according to the Constitution which was signed by the first thirteen representatives of thirteen original American states in 1787. The document was written in 1787 and since that time twenty six Amendments have been added. According to the Constitution the USA is a republic. So, the officials of any rank are elected by US citizens. Every citizen has rights which can not be violated.

The Constitution proclaims a federal system of government which keeps both the states and the federal power from getting too much power. It means that the federal government is given certain powers, for example, to make peace or war, to issue money and to regulate the trade and so on.

The federal power is located in Washington, D.C. It is based on legislative, executive and juridical branches of power.

The legislative power is vested in Congress, which consists of two houses: the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are 435 members in the House of Representatives and 100 senators in Congress. Each state elects two members for the Senate.

The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall.

The executive branch is headed by the President who is assisted by the Vice President. The President enforces federal laws, serves as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. The President of the USA is chosen in nationwide elections every 4 years together with the Vice.-President.

There are two main political parties in the USA: The Republican and the Democratic.

Barack Hussein Obama II(born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790. The City of Washington was originally a separate municipality within the Territory of Columbia until an act of Congress in 1871 effectively merged the City and the Territory into a single entity called the District of Columbia. It is for this reason that the city, while legally named the District of Columbia, is known as Washington, D.C. The city shares its name with the U.S. state of Washington, which is located on the country's Pacific coast.

WHITE HOUSE is the official name of the executive mansion of the President of the United States.

US symbols

The US Flag is called the Stars and Stripes or Old Glory or the Starry Banner. It is comprised of a blue canton with 50 stars each symbolising one American state and 13 red and white stripes that stand for the original 13 colonies.

The Statue of Liberty is the symbol of American democracy. It stands on Liberty Island in New York. It is one of the first things people see when they arrive in New York by sea. This National Monument was a present from France to the USA.

The eagle became the national emblem of the country in 1782. It has an olive branch (a symbol of peace) and arrows (a symbol of strength). You can see the eagle on the back of a dollar bill.

Cities

Holidays

Columbus Day is a great holiday in America. It is celebrated on the second Monday of October. On Columbus Day you can see the American flag everywhere to honor the man who was the discoverer of their country.

The last Thursday in November the American celebrate Thanksgiving Day. It is, perhaps, the most important day in the American year. People go to churches, families gather together for the day. They decorated their houses with the fruits and flowers of autumn and prepare traditional American food: roast turkey and pumpkin pie. But why do people celebrate this holiday? What does it mean? In 1620 the first colonists came to America and began a new life there. It was a very hard life. The colonists started to farm the land. The work was difficult and full of danger. In the autumn of 1621 the colonists had their first harvest. It was rather good. The colonists decided to have a special dinner. They wanted to thank God.

Memorial Day isa legal national holiday, observed annually on the last Monday in May in most of the United States, It honours the nation’s armed services killed in wartime. This holiday, originally called Decoration Day, is traditionally marked by parades, memorial speeches and ceremonies, and the decoration of graves with flowers and flags. Memorial Day was first observed on May 30, 1868, on the order of General John Alexander Logan for the purpose of decorating the graves of the American Civil War dead. It was observed on May 30 until 1971, when most states changed to a newly established federal schedule of holiday observance.

Independence Dayis an annual national holiday commemorating the formal adoption by the Continental Congress of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia. Although the signing of the Declaration was not completed until August, the Fourth of July holiday has been accepted as the official anniversary of United States independence and is celebrated in all states and territories of the U.S. The Fourth of July is traditionally celebrated publicly with parades and pageants, patriotic speeches, and organised firing of guns and cannons and displays of fireworks. Family picnics and outings are a feature of private Fourth of July celebrations.

Famous people of America

MARK TWAIN

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to most people as Mark Twain, was born and spent his boyhood in a small town on the Mississippi River. When he grew up, he became a river pilot. Later he went west and worked as a newspaper reporter. While he was on this job he began to sign his articles “Mark Twain”. From then on Clemens used Mark Twain as his pen-name.

Clemens worked on other newspaper, travelled, and gave lectures.

Clemens spent his summers on his farm. There he wrote “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, published in 1876. Tom in the story is really Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn is his close boyhood friend, Tom Blankenship.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States. He was born in Kentucky in 1809. His family was very poor. When Lincoln was a boy, he worked on his family’s farm. He did not go to school. He taught himself to read and write. Later, Lincoln studied law and became a lawyer. After that,

he became a politician.

Everybody liked Abraham Lincoln because he was intelligent and hard-working. Lincoln was very ambitious. He wanted to be good at everything he did. He said that he wanted to win the “race of life”. He was also kind and honest. People called him “Honest Abe”.

Lincoln became president in 1860. In 1861, there was a war between the North and the South of the United States. The people in the South wanted a separate government from the United States. The North wanted the United States to stay together as one country. Lincoln was the leader of the North. In the war, brother killed brother.

THOMAS ALVA EDISON

Thomas Alva Edison was born in 1847. He was sick a lot when he was young. Edison’s mother taught him lessons at home and he only studied the things he wanted to know. At the age of ten, he read his first science book. After he read the book, he built a laboratory in his house. Soon, Edison started to invent things. He was interested in the telegraph and electricity.

Did you know Edison invented wax paper, fire alarms, the battery, and motion pictures? But his favourite invention was the phonograph, or record player. He invented the phonograph in 1876. His other famous invention was the light bulb.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Ernest Hemingway is one of the greatest 20th-century American writers. His incredible career, and the legend which developed around his impressive personality, was that of a man of action, a devil-may-care adventurer, a brave war correspondent, an amateur boxer, a big-game hunter and deep-sea

Fisherman. . He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Theodore Roosevelt was the twenty-sixth president of the United States. He was president from 1901 to 1909. He was a very intelligent man. He was also very energetic. He was a boxer, a soldier, a rancher, and an explorer Theodore Roosevelt’s nickname was “Teddy”. Everybody called him Teddy. When he was president, he often went hunting. One day he went hunting with some friends and saw a little bear. He did not shoot the bear. He said the bear was too small and must go free. The next day the story of the little bear was in the newspapers. The newspapers named the little bear “Teddy” after the president. Soon people called toy bears for children “teddy bears”.

Martin Luther King, Jrwas an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience. King has become a national icon in the history of modern American liberalism. On October 14 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence.

We know many other famous americans: the father of Disney cartoons - Walt Disney, , a well-known writer of short stories – O. Henry, the inventor of the telephone Alexander Bell.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1810