United States

United States: capital Washington, D.C., population 341.8M, area 9,372,610 km². The 3rd most populous country, in Americas. Facts, map, neighbours and more.

The United States runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with Alaska reaching into the Arctic and Hawaii alone in mid-ocean. Roughly a fifth of its territory arrived in a single purchase from France in 1803. It set aside the world's first national park in 1872, and its cities gave the world blues, jazz and rock and roll.

• In 1803 the United States bought 2.1 million square kilometres from France for $15 million — under three cents an acre — and doubled its size at a stroke.
• On 10 May 1869 a golden spike joined two railroads at Promontory Summit in Utah, tying the Atlantic and Pacific coasts together with a single line of track.
• Congress made Yellowstone a national park on 1 March 1872: the first in the country and, by most accounts, the first anywhere in the world.
• Apollo 11 put two men on the Moon in July 1969 with less fuel to spare than any mission that followed, tripping a low-fuel alarm on the way down.

• Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod, bifocals and the stove that carries his name, and patented none of them: we should be glad, he wrote, to serve others by an invention of ours.
• Only ten of Emily Dickinson's nearly 1,800 poems reached print while she lived; the rest were found after her death in 1886 and published by her family.
• Before John Glenn flew the first American orbit in 1962 he asked for Katherine Johnson by name, and refused to go until she had checked the computer's numbers by hand.
• Louis Armstrong came out of New Orleans in the 1920s on cornet and trumpet and pushed jazz from collective improvisation towards the solo, the shape the music has kept since.

• The Grand Canyon runs 446 kilometres, opens to 29 kilometres wide and cuts more than 1,800 metres down through rock the Colorado River has been carrying away for millions of years.
• The Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937 with a main span of 1,280 metres — the longest in the world until 1964 and the tallest suspension bridge until 1998.
• The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the people of France: sculpted by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi over an iron frame engineered by Gustave Eiffel, and dedicated in October 1886.
• Between 1927 and 1941 Gutzon Borglum and his crews cut four presidents' heads, each eighteen metres tall, into a granite face in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

• Jazz took shape in the African American communities of New Orleans around 1900, pulling together blues, ragtime, spirituals, marches, hymns and dance music.
• Sixty-three places hold the title of national park, and each one had to be designated by an act of Congress rather than by any agency.
• The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 built a freeway network to one national standard of construction and signage, and rearranged where people could afford to live.
• Thanksgiving has fallen on the fourth Thursday of November nationwide since 1941, and the weekend around it is one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

What is the capital of United States?

The capital of United States is Washington, D.C..

What is the population of United States?

United States has about 341.8M people — the 3rd most populous country in the world.

How big is United States?

United States covers 9,372,610 km², making it the 4th largest country by area.

Which region is United States in?

United States is in North America, Americas.