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The United States of America
The United States of America (commonly referred to as
the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional
republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated
mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and
Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic
Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of
Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia
to the west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in
the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Caribbean
and Pacific.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with about 309 million
people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area,
and the third largest both by land area and population. It is one of the world's
most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale
immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the largest national
economy in the world, with an estimated 2008 gross domestic product (GDP) of US
$14.4 trillion (a quarter of nominal global GDP and a fifth of global GDP at
purchasing power parity).
Indigenous peoples, probably of Asian origin, have inhabited what is now the
mainland United States for many thousands of years. This Native American
population was greatly reduced by disease and warfare after European contact.
The United States was founded by thirteen British colonies located along the
Atlantic seaboard. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence,
which proclaimed their right to self-determination and their establishment of a
cooperative union. The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the American
Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence. The
Philadelphia Convention adopted the current United States Constitution on
September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of
a single republic with a strong central government. The Bill of Rights,
comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil
rights and freedoms, was ratified in 1791.
In the 19th century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, the
United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the
Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North
over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the
American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split
of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. By the
1870s, the national economy was the world's largest.[10] The Spanish–American
War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a military power. It
emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons and a
permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War
and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole
superpower. The country accounts for two-fifths of global military spending and
is a leading economic, political, and cultural force in the world.
Britain UK
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a
sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is
an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the
northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the
only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with the Republic of Ireland.
Apart from this land border, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the
North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. The largest island, Great
Britain, is linked to France by the Channel Tunnel.
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and unitary state consisting of
four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is
governed by a parliamentary system with its seat of government in London, the
capital, but with three devolved national administrations in Belfast, Cardiff
and Edinburgh, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland
respectively. The Channel Island bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, and the Isle
of Man are Crown Dependencies which means they are constitutionally tied to the
British Monarch but are not part of the UK. The UK has fourteen overseas
territories, all remnants of the British Empire, which at its height in
1922 encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface, the largest
empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language,
culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies.
The UK is a developed country, with the world's sixth largest economy by nominal
GDP and the seventh largest by purchasing power parity. It was the
world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the
19th and early 20th centuries, but the economic and social cost of two world
wars and the decline of its empire in the latter half of the 20th century
diminished its leading role in global affairs. The UK nevertheless remains a
major power with strong economic, cultural, military, scientific and political
influence. It is a recognised nuclear weapons state and has the third highest
defence spending in the world. It is a Member State of the European Union, a
permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and is a member of the
Commonwealth of Nations, G8, G20, NATO, OECD, and the World Trade Organization.
Cananda
Canada (pronounced /ˈkænədə/) is a country occupying
most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to
the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the
world's second largest country by total area and its common border with
the United States to the south and northwest is the longest in the world.
The land occupied by Canada was inhabited for millennia by various groups of
Aboriginal people. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French
expeditions explored, and later settled along, the Atlantic coast. France ceded
nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War.
In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through
Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces.
This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing
autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the
Statute of Westminster of 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act of 1982, which
severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament.
A federation consisting of ten provinces and three territories, Canada is
governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Queen
Elizabeth II as its head of state. It is a bilingual and multicultural country,
with both English and French as official languages both at the federal level and
in the province of New Brunswick. One of the world's highly developed countries,
Canada has a diversified economy that is reliant upon its abundant natural
resources and upon trade—particularly with the United States, with which Canada
has had a long and complex relationship. It is a member of the G8, G-20, NATO,
OECD, WTO, Commonwealth, Francophonie, OAS, APEC, and UN.