Geography of The United States

Geography Of The United States

The United States is a country in the Western Hemisphere. It consists of forty-eight contiguous states in North America, Alaska, a peninsula which forms the northwestern most part of North America, and Hawaii, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. There are several United States territories in the Pacific and Caribbean. The term "United States", when used in the geographical sense, means the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands of the United States. The country shares land borders with Canada and Mexico and maritime (water) borders with Russia, Cuba, and The Bahamas in addition to Canada and Mexico.

This video of the United States at night and the Aurora Borealis was taken by the crew of Expedition 29 on board the International Space Station. This pass begins just south of the Gulf of Alaska in the eastern Pacific Ocean and ends in Central America near the border of Honduras and Nicaragua.

Read more about Geography Of The United States:  Area, General Characteristics, Physiographic Divisions, Climate, Natural Disasters, Public Lands, Antipodes

Famous quotes containing the words united states, geography of, geography, united and/or states:

    “Hollywood ... was the place where the United States perpetrated itself as a universal dream and put the dream into mass production.”
    —Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    “Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.”
    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    “I incline to think that the people will not now sustain the policy of upholding a State Government against a rival government, by the use of the forces of the United States. If this leads to the overthrow of the de jure government in a State, the de facto government must be recognized.”
    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    “The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
    —Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)