The country across the ocean.

The Discovery of America

Everybody knows that the word America can mean different things. First of all America is the name of the country whose official name is the United States of America. Then America is the name of the two continents − North America and South America.

Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492. A lot of people think he was the first man from Europe to get there. Christopher was born in 1451 in Italy but he lived in Spain for many years. Columbus was a seaman and made a lot of sea voyages.

  Like many people of his time Columbus knew that our planet is round. He was sure he could also get to India if he sailed west. In 1492 the King and Queen of Spain gave Columbus money and ships to make a voyage to India.

So with three small ships Columbus and his men sailed west. They sailed for three weeks and then on October 12, they saw an island. It was situated in Central America. But Columbus didn’t know that then. He thought he was in Asia and gave the people he met on the island the name of Indians.

More than 20,000 Native Americans came to the American continent from Asia. They travelled all the way through Siberia and Alaska. Before Europeans arrived in America, Native Americans, or Indians, lived in tribes. The tribes were very different: some grew their food, some ate the food they could find. There were also tribes of fishermen and hunters.

They lived in wooden houses, or wigwams, and thought that there were spirits around them − in trees, mountains, fire or water. Spirits could bring them success. To make their spirits kind, Indians had ceremonies with dancing and music.

The USA is a large country in North America. Its neighbour in the north is Canada and in the south its neighbour is Mexico. The country extends from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the islands of Hawaii in the Pacific, and from cold, snowy Alaska to sunny Florida in the southeast.

  The US has nearly every kind of weather. Also, it has many kinds of land − wide grasslands, rocky mountains, powerful rivers, lakes of different sizes, sandy beaches, great forests and lands of ice and snow.

The highest mountains are the Rocky Mountains and the longest river is the Mississippi. More than 300 million people live in the US but the country is very big, so there is still a lot of open space.

There are 50 states that make up the USA. Some are small and some are big. The capital city is Washington, D.C. It lies on the banks of the Potomac River. The letters D.C. mean District of Columbia.

  Its territory doesn’t belong to any state. The US government and its Congress are situated there. Every state has its capital. The largest city in the country is New York City. New York City is famous for its skyscrapers.

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