United States

Coordinates: 40°N 100°W / 40°N 100°W / 40; -100

The United States of America (USA), commonly referred to as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a federal republic composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major territories and various possessions. The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., are in central North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwestern part of North America and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. At 3.8 million square miles (9.842 million km²) and with over 320 million people, the country is the world's third or fourth-largest by total area and the third most populous. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The geography and climate of the United States are also extremely diverse, and the country is home to a wide variety of wildlife.

United States (disambiguation)

United States usually refers to the United States of America, a country in North America.

United States may also refer to:

Countries

Historical

SS United States

SS United States is a luxury passenger liner built in 1952 for United States Lines designed to capture the trans-Atlantic speed record.

Built at a cost of $79.4 million ($724 million in today's dollars) the ship is the largest ocean liner constructed entirely in the U.S. and the fastest ocean liner to cross the Atlantic in either direction. Even in her retirement, she retains the Blue Riband, the accolade given to the passenger liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean in regular service with the highest speed.

Her construction was subsidized by the U.S. government, since she was designed to allow conversion to a troopship should the need arise.United States operated uninterrupted in transatlantic passenger service until 1969. Since 1996 she has been docked at Pier 82 on the Delaware River in Philadelphia.

Design and construction

Inspired by the exemplary service of the British liners RMS Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, which transported hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops to Europe during World War II, the U.S. government sponsored the construction of a large and fast merchant vessel that would be capable of transporting large numbers of soldiers. Designed by renowned American naval architect and marine engineer William Francis Gibbs (1886–1967), the liner's construction was a joint effort between the United States Navy and United States Lines. The U.S. government underwrote $50 million of the $78 million construction cost, with the ship's operators, United States Lines, contributing the remaining $28 million. In exchange, the ship was designed to be easily converted in times of war to a troopship with a capacity of 15,000 troops, or to a hospital ship .

United States presidential election, 1916

The United States presidential election of 1916 was the 33rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1916. Incumbent President Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate, was pitted against Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate. After a hard-fought contest, Wilson defeated Hughes by nearly 600,000 votes in the popular vote and secured a narrow majority in the Electoral College by winning several swing states with razor-thin margins. Wilson's re-election marked the first time that a Democratic Party candidate had won two consecutive Presidential elections since Andrew Jackson won re-election in the 1832 election.

The election took place while Mexico was going through the Mexican Revolution and Europe was embroiled in World War I. Public sentiment in the still neutral United States leaned towards the British and French (Allied) forces, due to the harsh treatment of civilians by the German Army, which had invaded and occupied large parts of Belgium and northern France. However, despite their sympathy with the Allied forces, most American voters wanted to avoid involvement in the war, and preferred to continue a policy of neutrality. Wilson's campaign used the popular slogan "He kept us out of war" to appeal to those voters who wanted to avoid a war in Europe or with Mexico. The progressive Hughes criticized Wilson for not taking the "necessary preparations" to face a conflict, which served to strengthen Wilson's image as an anti-war candidate. The Republicans had supported a moderate interventionist policy under the previous three administrations, while no Democratic president had presided over a major war since James Knox Polk with the Mexican-American War.

United States presidential election, 1872

The United States presidential election of 1872 was the 22nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1872. The incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant was easily elected to a second term in office, with Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts as his running mate, despite a split within the Republican Party that resulted in a defection of many Liberal Republicans to opponent Horace Greeley of the Democratic Party, which also nominated the candidates of the Liberal Republican ticket that year.

On November 29, 1872, after the popular vote, but before the Electoral College cast its votes, Greeley died. As a result, electors previously committed to Greeley voted for four different candidates for president, and eight different candidates for vice-president. Greeley himself received three posthumous electoral votes, but these votes were disallowed by Congress. The election was the first in which every competing state used a popular vote to determine its electors; since 1832, South Carolina had been the lone state to decide electors by the state legislature. Florida's legislature had decided its electors in 1868. The election of 1872 is the only US presidential election in which a candidate has died during the electoral process.

United States presidential election, 1912

The United States presidential election of 1912 was the 32nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. The election was a rare four-way contest. Incumbent President William Howard Taft was renominated by the Republican Party with the support of its conservative wing. After former President Theodore Roosevelt failed to receive the Republican nomination, he called his own convention and created the Progressive Party (nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party"). It nominated Roosevelt and ran candidates for other offices in major states. Democrat Woodrow Wilson was finally nominated on the 46th ballot of a contentious convention, thanks to the support of William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate who still had a large and loyal following in 1912. Eugene V. Debs, running for a fourth time, was the nominee of the Socialist Party of America.

Wilson won the election, gaining a large majority in the Electoral College and winning 42% of the popular vote, while Roosevelt won 27%, Taft 23% and Debs 6%. Wilson became the only elected president from the Democratic Party between 1892 and 1932, and the second of only two Democrats to be elected president between 1860 and 1932. This was the last election in which a candidate who was not a Republican or Democrat came second in either the popular vote or the Electoral College, and the first election in which all 48 states of the contiguous United States participated.

United States presidential election, 1816

The United States presidential election of 1816 was the 8th quadrennial presidential election. It was held from Friday, November 1 to Wednesday, December 4, 1816. It came at the end of the two-term presidency of Democratic-Republican James Madison. With the Federalist Party on the verge of collapse, Madison's Secretary of State, James Monroe, had an overwhelming advantage against very weak opposition. Monroe won the electoral college by the wide margin of 183 to 34.

The previous four years of American politics were dominated by the effects of the War of 1812. While the war had not ended in victory, the peace concluded in 1815 was satisfactory to the American people, and the Democratic-Republicans received the credit for its conclusion. The Federalists found themselves discredited by their opposition to the war and the secessionist rhetoric from New England embodied by the Hartford Convention of 1814-15. Furthermore, President Madison had succeeded in realizing certain measures favored by the Federalists, for example a national bank and protective tariffs. This gave the Federalists few issues to campaign on.