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The earliest known use of the name "America" dates to 1505, when German poet Matthias Ringmann used it in a poem about the New World. [2] The word is a Latinized form of the first name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who first proposed that the West Indies discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 were part of a previously unknown landmass, rather than the eastern limit of Asia.
In contemporary English, North and South America are generally considered separate continents, and taken together are called the Americas in the plural. When conceived as a unitary continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular.
Uncle Sam (with the same initials as United States) is a common national personification of the United States, depicting the federal government or the country as a whole. Since the early 19th century, Uncle Sam has been a popular symbol of the U.S. government in American culture and a manifestation of patriotic emotion. [3]
United States of America—a federal republic in North America founded in 1776 and comprising 50 states (one of which, Hawaii, is not considered to be located in North America) and one federal district (the District of Columbia), with several outlying territories of varying affiliation; commonly referred to as the U.S. or simply America.
The United States itself is called Usono, similar to Usonia. Only in formal contexts is the United States referred to by the long-form official name Unuiĝintaj Ŝtatoj de Ameriko or Unuiĝintaj Ŝtatoj de Nord-Ameriko (United States of North America). L. L. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, used the Usono terms as early as 1910. [17]
The United States has a rich history spanning nearly 250 years. The national motto "In God We Trust" dates back to the Civil War—although Congress didn't make it official until 1956. Each state ...
Depending on what story you believe, America's most famous shopping day is either named after a financial crisis, a concerned police force or, according to some theories, 19th-century slave owners ...
The first documented use of the phrase "United States of America" is a letter from January 2, 1776. Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George Washington, wrote to Joseph Reed, Washington's aide-de-camp, seeking to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort.