United States Country Info - North America

Description and Basic Information

United States with its capital Washington is located in North America (North America, bordering both the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Pacific Ocean). It covers some 9,629,092 square kilometres (about half the size of Russia; about three-tenths the size of Africa; about half the size of South America (or slightly larger than Brazil); slightly larger than China; more than twice the size of the European Union) with 303,824,000 citizens. English, Spanish and are the languages commonly used by the people in United States (consider regional differences). Canada, Mexico and Cuba are bordering countries.

The United States of America is a large country in North America. It also boasts the world's third largest population after China and India, with over 300 million people. The United States is not the America of television and movies. It is large, complex, and diverse, with distinct regional identities. Due to the distances involved, traveling between regions can be time-consuming and expensive. The overall climate is temperate, with notable exceptions. Alaska has Arctic tundra, while Hawaii and South Florida are tropical. The United States has exceptionally onerous and complicated visa requirements. Read up carefully before your visit. The United States is extraordinarily diverse in its array of attractions. You will never run out of things to see; even if you think you've exhausted what one place has to offer, the next destination is only a road trip away. While GSM has been gaining popularity, the U.S. uses the unusual 1900 and 850 MHz frequencies; check with your operator or mobile phone dealer to see if your phone is a tri-band or quad-band model that will work here.

Pictures from Capital (Washington)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About United States

The landscape featuresvast central plain, mountains in west, hills and low mountains in east with rugged mountains and broad river valleys in Alaska and rugged, volcanic topography in Hawaii. The average density of population is about 31 per km². The climate in United States can be described as mostly temperate, but tropical in Hawaii and Florida, arctic in Alaska, semiarid in the great plains west of the Mississippi River, and arid in the Great Basin of the southwest with low winter temperatures in the northwest are ameliorated occasionally in January and February by warm chinook winds from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Potential threats by nature are tsunamis or volcanoes, earthquake activity around Pacific Basin, hurricanes along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts, tornadoes in the Midwest and Southeast, mud slides in California, forest fires in the west, flooding or permafrost in northern Alaska, a major impediment to development.

To reach someone in United States dial +1 prior to a number. There are 141,000,000 installed telephones. And there are 286,000,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 850, 1900 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".us". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 120V - 60Hz. The following list are the 51 regions/states in United States we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total American population grew at a rate of 0.97% (or by 3,009,259 citizens). With 2,599,751 deaths and 4,290,520 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at 0.55%. 1,318,490 persons more in total immigrated to the country than emmigrated.

An overview of age distribution in United States: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.