Interesting Facts About America

Short answer

• The United States has 50 states, a federal district in Washington, D.C., and several territories. Alaska and Hawaii were the last states to join, both in 1959, and each star on the flag stands for one state.
• The Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776. The Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, and it has been amended 27 times.
• The country holds world records in nature. Yellowstone, created in 1872, was the first national park in the world. Mount McKinley is the highest peak in North America at 20,310 feet. Its federal name was reinstated in January 2025; Denali is the Koyukon name used by Alaska, and the surrounding park remains Denali National Park and Preserve. Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave system in the world, and Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area.
• The bald eagle has appeared on the Great Seal since 1782 and was formally designated the national bird in 2024. The American bison became the national mammal in 2016.
• The United States put the first humans on the Moon. Apollo 11 landed on July 20, 1969, and 12 Americans walked on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972. No other country has landed people on the Moon.
• More than 350 languages are spoken in homes across the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and there are 575 federally recognized Tribes, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

How to Read This Article

Every fact in this article was checked against a named primary or institutional source before it was written, and each one is recorded in a claim ledger with its source and the date it was checked. Where sources give a figure with a date attached, the date is stated, because counts such as population and the number of recognized Tribes change over time. Where a popular claim could not be verified against a reliable source, it was left out. The result is a shorter list than the usual roundups, but every fact in it can be traced back to the institution that published it.

America in Numbers

The United States is the third largest country in the world by total area, after Russia and Canada, at about 3.8 million square miles, according to the CIA World Factbook. It stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, from the Canadian border in the north to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico in the south, and it includes Alaska in the far northwest and the island state of Hawaii in the Pacific.

The 2020 census counted 331.4 million people living in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That makes it the third most populous country in the world, after India and China. The population is spread very unevenly. New York City alone has more than 8 million residents, which is more people than live in 38 of the 50 states, according to Census Bureau population estimates. At the other end of the scale, Wyoming has fewer than 600,000 residents, which is fewer people than live in many single American cities.

The country is divided into 50 states plus the District of Columbia, which is the seat of the federal government and is not itself a state. The United States also holds several territories, including Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. People born in most of those territories are U.S. citizens, but the territories do not have voting representation in Congress, and their residents cannot vote for president.

Each state has its own government, its own capital and its own laws on many subjects, while the federal government handles matters such as defense, foreign policy and interstate commerce. That split is part of why American facts so often come with a state attached: the largest state, the oldest city, the tallest building and the deepest lake are facts about particular places as much as facts about the country.

How the United States Began

The United States began as 13 British colonies along the Atlantic coast. On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted to declare independence, and on July 4, 1776, it adopted the Declaration of Independence, according to the National Archives. The Declaration announced that the colonies were free and independent states, and its famous words, that all men are created equal, have been quoted and debated ever since. The document itself was drafted mainly by Thomas Jefferson, and the first document to use the name “The United States of America” was the Declaration, according to the Library of Congress.

Independence had to be won on the battlefield before it meant anything in practice. The Revolutionary War ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, in which Britain recognized American independence. The young country then needed a government that could last, and the answer was the Constitution. Delegates signed the Constitution on September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, and it took effect in 1789 after enough states had ratified it, according to the National Archives.

The Constitution created a federal government with three branches: Congress makes the laws, the president carries them out, and the courts interpret them. It has been amended 27 times. The first 10 amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and protect freedoms such as speech, religion and due process. Later amendments ended slavery, gave women the right to vote in 1920 through the 19th Amendment, and lowered the voting age to 18. The full story of due process and the Bill of Rights is covered in a separate Amberaisle guide.

George Washington became the first president in 1789. He is the only president to have been elected unanimously by the Electoral College, and he set the precedent of serving two terms, a limit that was later written into the Constitution as the 22nd Amendment in 1951. The capital moved several times in the early years, from New York City to Philadelphia, before settling in Washington, D.C., a city built for the purpose on land along the Potomac River. Our guide to where Washington, D.C. is and what the District of Columbia means explains why the capital is not part of any state.

The country then grew fast, and much of that growth came through purchase rather than war. In 1803 the United States bought the Louisiana Territory from France for 15 million dollars, a deal that roughly doubled the size of the country, according to the Library of Congress. The territory covered about 828,000 square miles, stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. In 1867 the United States bought Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars, about two cents an acre, under a treaty signed on March 30, 1867, according to the Library of Congress. Critics at the time mocked the purchase as “Seward’s Folly” after Secretary of State William Seward, but Alaska later proved rich in gold, oil and fish, and its size alone, about 586,000 square miles, makes it by far the largest state.

Statehood came last to the two states that are not connected to the rest of the country. Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959, and Hawaii became the 50th state on August 21, 1959, according to the Congressional Research Service. No new state has joined since, so the flag has carried 50 stars for more than six decades.

The Flag and the National Symbols

The American flag has had 27 versions since the first was adopted in 1777, with a star added for each new state. The current 50 star flag has been in use since 1960, making it the longest used version in the country’s history. Its design has an unlikely origin story: it was created by Robert G. Heft, a 17 year old high school student in Lancaster, Ohio, who made a 50 star flag as a class project in 1958, before Alaska and Hawaii had become states. His teacher first gave the project a B minus, then raised the grade to an A after the design was chosen, according to the Smithsonian Institution.

The flag’s colors have no official meaning in law, but tradition reads red as valor, white as purity and blue as justice. The 13 stripes stand for the 13 original colonies, and the 50 stars stand for the 50 states. The flag is governed by a set of customs called the Flag Code, which Congress adopted in 1942, and which covers how the flag should be displayed, raised and retired.

The bald eagle has been a symbol of the United States since 1782, when it was adopted as part of the Great Seal, according to the Congressional Research Service. The eagle appears on the seal, on passports, on military insignia and on the one dollar bill. For more than two centuries it was a national emblem by custom rather than by statute, and Congress formally designated the bald eagle as the national bird in 2024. The eagle nearly disappeared in the 20th century because of hunting, habitat loss and the pesticide DDT, but protection under the Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940 and the Endangered Species Act helped the population recover, and the bird was removed from the endangered species list in 2007.

The country’s newest national symbol is the American bison. Congress designated the North American bison as the national mammal in 2016, when President Barack Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act on May 9, 2016, according to the National Park Service. Bison once numbered in the tens of millions across North America, then fell to barely more than 1,000 animals by the late 1880s after decades of commercial hunting. Conservation efforts led by President Theodore Roosevelt and others brought the species back, and bison now live in national parks, refuges and private herds across the country. The bison joins the eagle as one of only two national animals.

Other symbols were set by law on specific dates. “The Star-Spangled Banner” became the national anthem in 1931, and the rose became the national floral emblem in 1986, according to the Congressional Research Service. The oak was designated the national tree in 2004. The national motto, “In God We Trust,” appears on American coins and currency, and it was adopted as the official motto by Congress in 1956.

Places That Tell the American Story

The Statue of Liberty is the most famous symbol of the United States, and it was a gift. France gave the statue to the United States to mark the centennial of independence, and it was dedicated on October 28, 1886, on what was then called Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor, according to the National Park Service. The copper statue was designed by French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel, who later built the Eiffel Tower. The statue arrived from France in crates and was assembled on a pedestal built with American donations. Its full name is “Liberty Enlightening the World,” and the tablet in its left arm is inscribed with the date July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals.

Mount Rushmore, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, carries the faces of four presidents carved into granite: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Work began in 1927 under sculptor Gutzon Borglum, and it ended in 1941, after Borglum’s death, with the work unfinished in its original plan, according to the National Park Service. Each face is about 60 feet tall. Washington was chosen to represent the founding of the country, Jefferson its expansion, Roosevelt its development and Lincoln its preservation through the Civil War.

The Library of Congress, in Washington, D.C., is the largest library in the world, according to the Library of Congress itself. It was founded in 1800, when Congress set aside 5,000 dollars to buy books for its own use. The original collection was burned by British troops in 1814, during the War of 1812, and Thomas Jefferson then sold his personal library of 6,487 books to Congress in 1815 to start the collection again. Today the Library holds more than 170 million items, including books, maps, photographs, recordings and manuscripts, in more than 470 languages.

The National Park Service itself is an American invention in a sense: the idea of setting aside land for public enjoyment began with Yellowstone, and the Park Service was created in 1916 to manage the growing system. The system now covers more than 85 million acres across every state, the District of Columbia and the territories.

Nature on a Record Breaking Scale

Yellowstone National Park was established on March 1, 1872, when President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, and it was the first national park in the world, according to the National Park Service. The park covers about 2.2 million acres across Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. It sits on top of a volcanic hotspot, which explains its geysers, hot springs and mud pots: Yellowstone holds about half of the world’s geysers, including Old Faithful. The park is also one of the largest nearly intact temperate ecosystems on Earth, home to grizzly bears, wolves, bison and elk. Our guide to how big Yellowstone National Park is and things to do in Yellowstone covers the park in more detail.

The Grand Canyon, in Arizona, is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and about a mile deep, according to the National Park Service. The Colorado River carved it over millions of years through layers of rock, some of which are nearly two billion years old. The canyon exposes rock layers that record much of Earth’s history, which is one reason it became a national park in 1919. The canyon is not the deepest canyon in the world, but its scale and its colors make it one of the most visited natural places in the country. See also our guide to how deep the Grand Canyon is.

Mount McKinley, in Alaska, is the highest peak in North America at 20,310 feet above sea level, according to the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. The mountain was officially called Mount McKinley for much of the 20th century, after President William McKinley, and its name was changed to Denali, a Koyukon Athabascan word meaning “the high one,” in 2015. In January 2025, Executive Order 14172 reinstated Mount McKinley as the federal name, and the Department of the Interior’s Secretarial Order 3424 followed in February 2025. Denali remains the name used by the State of Alaska, and the surrounding park remains Denali National Park and Preserve. Measured from its base to its summit, Mount McKinley rises about 18,000 feet, which makes it taller from base to peak than Mount Everest. Climbers take two to four weeks for a round trip, and the mountain creates its own weather.

Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky, is the longest known cave system in the world, with more than 420 miles of surveyed passageways, according to the National Park Service. Explorers keep finding new passages, so the mapped length grows almost every year. The cave formed as slightly acidic groundwater dissolved limestone over millions of years, and it has been used by people for thousands of years: Native Americans explored it at least 5,000 years ago, and enslaved guide Stephen Bishop mapped much of it in the 1840s.

Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, covering 31,700 square miles, according to the National Park Service. It holds about 10 percent of the world’s surface fresh water, and it is large enough to hold all the water in the other Great Lakes combined, plus three more lakes the size of Lake Erie. Its water is cold and clear, and its storms are famous: the lake’s shipwrecks include the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in 1975.

Crater Lake, in Oregon, is the deepest lake in the United States at 1,943 feet, according to the National Park Service. It formed when a volcano collapsed about 7,700 years ago and the crater filled with rain and snow, with no rivers flowing in or out. Its water is among the clearest in the world, and on a calm day the blue is so intense that visitors often describe it as unreal.

Death Valley National Park, in California and Nevada, holds the lowest point in North America. Badwater Basin sits 282 feet below sea level, according to the National Park Service, and it is also one of the hottest places on Earth: the air temperature at Furnace Creek reached 134 degrees Fahrenheit in 1913, the highest air temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth, according to the National Weather Service. The same park also contains a peak, Telescope Peak, that rises more than 11,000 feet above sea level, so the park spans more than two miles of elevation.

The United States also has more tornadoes than any other country. About 1,200 tornadoes hit the United States each year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The reason is geography: warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico meets cold, dry air from Canada and the Rocky Mountains over the flat central plains, which creates the rotating thunderstorms that produce tornadoes. Texas records the most tornadoes of any state. Our guide to when tornado season is explains the timing state by state.

The border between the United States and Canada is about 5,525 miles long, including the border with Alaska, which makes it the longest international land border in the world, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. Much of it is unguarded and unmarked except by boundary markers, and it crosses forests, lakes, prairies and mountains. At the narrowest point of the Bering Strait, the United States and Russia are only about 2.4 miles apart: Little Diomede Island in Alaska and Big Diomede Island in Russia sit on either side of the International Date Line, so they are in different days as well as different countries.

People, Languages and Everyday Life

The United States has no single ethnic or cultural origin story, and its languages show it. The Census Bureau reports that at least 350 languages are spoken in American homes, based on American Community Survey data, and that about one in five residents speaks a language other than English at home. Spanish is by far the most common of those languages, spoken by tens of millions of people, followed by Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Arabic. The country also has about 150 Native North American languages, including Navajo, Yupik, Dakota, Apache and Cherokee, though many of them are spoken by small and shrinking numbers of people.

For most of its history, the United States had no official language declared in federal law, even though English has always been the language of government. A 2025 executive order designated English as the official language of the United States, the first such designation at the federal level. Many states have their own official language laws, and government business in some places is conducted in more than one language.

Native peoples lived in North America for thousands of years before European colonization, and their governments continue today. There are 575 federally recognized Tribes, including American Indian Tribes and Alaska Native villages, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Federal recognition means a government to government relationship with the United States, and recognized Tribes possess rights of self government. The number changes when recognition is granted or a Tribe’s status changes, so the Bureau’s published list is the authority, and its most recent list counts 575.

American daily life has its own scale. The United States has more than 35,000 museums, according to a 2014 count by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which is more than the number of McDonald’s and Starbucks locations in the country combined. The interstate highway system, built from the 1950s onward, was influenced by the German autobahn network that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had seen during the Second World War, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

New York City deserves a fact of its own. It is the largest city in the country, with more than 8 million residents, and it was the first capital of the United States, from 1789 to 1790. The city was originally a Dutch settlement called New Amsterdam, and it became New York when England took control in 1664. It is home to the United Nations headquarters, the New York Stock Exchange and the Statue of Liberty, and its five boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, each have a distinct character.

America in Space

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed the first humans on the Moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface while Michael Collins remained in orbit aboard the command module, according to NASA. Armstrong’s first words on the surface, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” were heard around the world. The Apollo program went on to land 12 Americans on the Moon between 1969 and 1972, and the United States remains the only country to have landed people on the Moon.

The achievement had been set as a national goal only eight years earlier. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy challenged the country to land a person on the Moon and return them safely to Earth before the end of the decade, at a time when the Soviet Union was ahead in the space race. The program employed about 400,000 people at its peak, according to NASA. The Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo to the Moon remains the most powerful rocket ever flown successfully, at 363 feet tall.

American space exploration did not stop with Apollo. NASA’s space shuttles flew 135 missions between 1981 and 2011, the Hubble Space Telescope has returned images of the distant universe since 1990, and American rovers have explored Mars since the 1990s. The International Space Station, which has been continuously occupied since 2000, is a partnership of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada, and American astronauts have spent more than a year in space on single missions.

How the Government Works

The United States is a federal republic, which means power is shared between the national government and the states. Congress, the legislative branch, has two parts: the Senate, with 100 members, two from each state, and the House of Representatives, with 435 members, divided among the states by population. Senators serve six year terms and representatives serve two year terms. The president is elected every four years through the Electoral College, not by a direct national vote, which is why a candidate can win the presidency while losing the national popular vote, as has happened five times in American history.

The Supreme Court is the highest court in the country, and it has had nine justices since 1869. The justices are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and they serve for life unless they retire or are removed. The Court’s power to strike down laws that conflict with the Constitution was established in 1803, in the case Marbury v. Madison. Our guide to how many justices are on the Supreme Court explains the history of the number nine.

Washington, D.C., the capital, is not a state and has no voting member of Congress. Its residents elect a mayor and a city council, and Congress retains authority over the district’s budget and laws. The district’s license plates carry the slogan “Taxation Without Representation,” a reference to the fact that its residents pay federal taxes without voting representation in Congress. The cherry trees that draw visitors to the capital each spring were a gift from Japan in 1912, and you can read about them in our guide to Washington, D.C. cherry blossoms.

The federal government is the largest employer in the country, with more than two million civilian employees, and its budget is measured in trillions of dollars. The Constitution requires only a few things of it: to provide for the common defense, to promote the general welfare and to secure the blessings of liberty. Everything else has been argued over ever since, which is itself one of the most American facts of all.

What Makes America Different

The facts in this article add up to a pattern. The United States is young for a country, only about 250 years old as an independent nation, but it is large, varied and full of superlatives. It has the world’s first national park, the world’s longest cave system, the world’s largest freshwater lake by surface area, the most tornadoes of any country and the longest land border in the world. It has 50 states that differ sharply from each other in climate, culture and law, and a federal system that was designed to let those differences coexist.

It is also a country that keeps records. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where anyone can see the documents that founded the country. The Library of Congress holds the papers of 23 presidents. The National Park Service preserves the places where the history happened. That habit of keeping the evidence is what makes a facts article like this one possible: the interesting facts about America are interesting because they can be checked.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many states are in the United States?

There are 50 states. The last two to join were Alaska, the 49th state on January 3, 1959, and Hawaii, the 50th state on August 21, 1959, according to the Congressional Research Service. The country also includes the District of Columbia and several territories, which are not states.

What is the most interesting fact about America?

There is no single answer, but the strongest candidates are all verifiable firsts and records. Yellowstone was the first national park in the world, created in 1872. The United States is the only country to have landed people on the Moon, in 1969. And the country holds natural records including the longest known cave system, Mammoth Cave, and the largest freshwater lake by surface area, Lake Superior.

When was the United States founded?

The Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776, which is celebrated as Independence Day. The Constitution, which created the current federal government, was signed on September 17, 1787, and took effect in 1789. The National Archives holds both documents.

What is the national animal of the United States?

The United States has two national animals. The bald eagle has been a national emblem since 1782 and was formally designated the national bird in 2024. The American bison was designated the national mammal in 2016, when the National Bison Legacy Act was signed.

What is the largest state in the United States?

Alaska is by far the largest state, at about 586,000 square miles. It is more than twice the size of Texas, the second largest state, and it is larger than the next three largest states combined. Alaska was bought from Russia in 1867 for 7.2 million dollars and became a state in 1959.

Does the United States have an official language?

For most of its history the United States had no official language declared in federal law, although English has always been the language of government. A 2025 executive order designated English as the official language of the United States. At least 350 languages are spoken in American homes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sources & references

• National Archives, Declaration of Independence (1776). archives.gov/milestone-documents/declaration-of-independence
• National Archives, The Constitution of the United States. archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution
• Library of Congress, Alaska Purchase Treaty: Primary Documents in American History. guides.loc.gov/alaska-treaty
• Library of Congress, "America's Greatest Library." loc.gov
• U.S. Census Bureau, "Census Bureau Reports at Least 350 Languages Spoken in U.S. Homes" (2015). census.gov/newsroom/archives/2015-pr/cb15-185.html
• U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census apportionment results. census.gov
• Congressional Research Service, "Admission of States to the Union: A Historical Reference Guide" (R47747). congress.gov
• Congressional Research Service, "United States National Symbols: Congressional Designation and Past Practices." EveryCRSReport.com
• National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park Foundation Document. nps.gov
• National Park Service, "Denali National Park and Preserve." nps.gov/dena
• Executive Order 14172, "Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness" (January 20, 2025). whitehouse.gov
• U.S. Department of the Interior, Secretarial Order 3424, "Mount McKinley and Landmarks Honoring the Alaskan People" (February 14, 2025). doi.gov
• National Park Service, "Mammoth Cave National Park: World Heritage Site." nps.gov
• National Park Service, "Bison Bellows: America's New National Mammal." nps.gov
• National Park Service, "Liberty Island Chronology." nps.gov
• National Park Service, "Lake Superior." nps.gov
• National Park Service, Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, Badwater Basin and Mount Rushmore park pages. nps.gov
• NASA, "Apollo 50th: Next Giant Leap." nasa.gov
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "Tornado Facts" (National Weather Service / National Severe Storms Laboratory). noaa.gov
• U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, "What is a federally recognized tribe?" bia.gov
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "United States" and "Canada-United States border."
• CIA World Factbook, "United States." cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/united-states
• Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Star-Spangled Banner and 50 star flag collections. si.edu
• Institute of Museum and Library Services, museum census data. imls.gov
• National Weather Service, Death Valley temperature records. weather.gov