US flag
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America and consisting of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third-most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C., and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City.
Indigenous peoples have inhabited the Americas for thousands of years. Beginning in 1607, British colonization led to the establishment of the Thirteen Colonies in what is now the Eastern United States. Their quarrel with the British Crown over taxation and political representation led to the American Revolution and the ensuing Revolutionary War. The United States declared independence on July 4, 1776, becoming the first nation-state founded on Enlightenment principles of unalienable natural rights, consent of the governed, and liberal democracy. The country began expanding across North America, spanning the continent by 1848. Sectional division over slavery led to the secession of the Confederate States of America, which fought the remaining states of the Union during the American Civil War (1861–1865). With the Union's victory and preservation, slavery was abolished nationally. By 1900, the United States established itself as a great power, becoming the world's largest economy. After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. entered World War II on the Allied side. The aftermath of the war left the United States and the Soviet Union as the world's two superpowers and led to the Cold War. During the Cold War, both countries engaged in a struggle for ideological dominance but avoided direct military conflict. They also competed in the Space Race, which culminated in the 1969 landing of Apollo 11, making the U.S. the only nation to land humans on the Moon. With the Soviet Union's collapse and the subsequent end of the Cold War in 1991, the United States emerged as the world's sole superpower.
The United States government is a federal republic and a representative democracy with three separate branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. It has a bicameral national legislature composed of the House of Representatives, a lower house based on population; and the Senate, an upper house based on equal representation for each state. Many policy issues are decentralized at a state or local level, with widely differing laws by jurisdiction. The U.S. ranks highly in international measures of quality of life, income and wealth, economic competitiveness, human rights, innovation, and education; it has low levels of perceived corruption. It has higher levels of incarceration and inequality than most other liberal democracies, and is the only liberal democracy without universal healthcare. As a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, the U.S. has been drastically shaped by the world's largest immigrant population.
The United States is a highly developed country that has the highest median income of any polity in the world. Its economy accounts for approximately a quarter of global GDP and is the world's largest by GDP at market exchange rates. It is the world's largest importer and second-largest exporter, and possesses the largest amount of wealth of any country. The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, NATO, World Health Organization, and is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It wields considerable global influence as the world's foremost political, cultural, economic, military, and scientific power.
Known Records[]
Longest rail network[]
The largest national railway network is that of the United States of America, which has 148,433 km of actively maintained track, according to statistics compiled by the International Union of Railways in 2021.
Largest GDP[]
According to the World Bank, the country with the largest nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the United States of America, whose economy was worth $19,390,604 million (£19.39 trillion) in 2017. If cost of living differences are taken into account – adjusting the GDP calculation for purchasing power parity (PPP) – then the United States falls to second place. The United States' GDP figure doesn't change (because PPP calculations are made relative to the USA) but China's rises to $23,300,782.88 ($23.2 trillion). The next-largest economy in the world is that of China, with a nominal GDP of $12,237,700 million ($12.2 trillion). China's GDP is growing at a much faster rate than that of the United States, however. China's economy increased in value by 6.9% in 2017, compared with 2.3% for the United States (figures from the World Bank). Nominal GDP can be most simply explained as the combined value of all the goods and services produced within a country in a year. It is typically stated in US dollars, converted from the local currency at single-year official exchange rates. GDP adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) takes that figure and adjusts it in accordance with the real-world purchasing power of the currency in each country.
Largest producer of beef (country)[]
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the world's largest producer of beef is the United States. The 2021 edition of the FAO's Food Outlook report estimated that the United States produced 12,353,000 tonnes of bovine meat in 2020. The United States is also the world's largest market for beef, consuming roughly 12.39 million tonnes every year. Almost all of its annual output is sold on the domestic market. Only 1.39 million tonnes of beef was exported in 2020, and that was offset by 1.45 million tonnes of imported beef.
Most satellites in orbit (country)[]
According to figures provided by the ASTRIAGraph team at the University of Texas on 15 Feb 2022, a total of 3,582 of the 8,239 satellites currently in Earth orbit belong to the United States government or US-based private companies. The number of US-launched payloads in orbit has more than doubled in the last three years due to the creation of a number of large "constellations" of small, relatively cheap communications satellites. The most extensive and well-known of these is the SpaceX Starlink constellation, which includes 1,877 operational satellites as of 15 Feb 2022. There are no official figures on what proportion of the 8,239 satellites in orbit are still active, as the statuses of military and reconnaissance ("spy") satellites are not publicly disclosed. ASTRIAGraph, however, estimates that there are around 3,935 inactive satellites.
Fastest growing body mass index[]
The US has seen the largest growth in BMI between 1980 and 2008, with the average person´s weight growing by a kilogram a decade. In 2008, one in 10 of the world´s population - half a billion people - were obese, and obesity rates have doubled in the past 10 years.
Highest expenditure on health care (country)[]
According to World Health Organization figures from 2014, the USA spends more money on healthcare than any other country in the world – a massive 17.1% of the nation's GDP (Gross Domestic Product). This equates to around $2,985,748,000,000 ($2.98 trillion) or roughly $9,400 per person every year. US Government spending on health care accounts for around half of this figure – 8.3 percent of GDP – with the remaining 8.8 percent coming from private organizations, charities and individuals.
Most passenger kilometers (international; by country)[]
Americans are the world's most frequent fliers, having clocked up an estimated 1,110.8 billion passenger kilometers in 2000 (this figure is obtained by adding together the journey distance of each passenger on each flight). British citizens are second, with 172.3 billion passenger kilometers, and the Japanese third, with 169.8 billion.
Most assassinated leaders by country[]
In a study published in 2009 in the American Economics Journal: Macroeconomics entitled: “Hit or Miss? The Effects of Assassinations on Institutions and War”, the authors Benjamin F Jones and Benjamin A Olken looked at a dataset of all assassinations of primary national leaders between 1875 and 2004. There were 3 countries that shared top place for the number of assassinations in that period; namely the Dominican Republic, Spain and the United States with three each. In all the 59 fatal assassinations cited, the most popular weapon was by far the gun, which featured in 74.6% of the killings. In fact, there was an assassination of a world leader in nearly two out of every three years from 1950.