US History: Essential Facts and Figures
Posted on Mar 11, 2025 in History
How many states are there in the United States?
There are 48 contiguous states and Washington DC, and the state of Alaska in the northwest.What is the “Star-Spangled Banner”?
The Star-Spangled Banner is the national anthem of the US. It is a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key.How many stars and stripes are there in the American flag and what do they mean?
There are fifty stars in total; each star represents each state of the US. The stripes are 13 (red and white) symbolizing the 13 British colonies that gave rise to the country.What is the date of Independence Day?
July 4th, 1776.What is the United States Capitol?
The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the U.S. Congress, the legislature of the U.S. federal government.What is the Pentagon?
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia.What is the White House and where is it located?
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the US. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, DC.Where is Mount Rushmore located?
The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota. Carved there are the heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.Which are the 13 original states of the US?
Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.What are the two major political parties in the US today?
Republican and Democratic are the major political parties today.Which president is called the “Father of the country”? Why?
George Washington.For how long is the president elected?
Today, four years, with a maximum of two terms.How many senators are there in Congress?
There are 100 senators, 2 per each state, and in the House of Representatives there are 435 members.What is the Bill of Rights?
The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.Which were the last two states to be incorporated into the Union?
Alaska and Hawaii in 1959.What is the acronym and capital of the following states?
- California (CA) Sacramento
- Nevada (NV) Carson City
- Washington (WA) Olympia
- Texas (TX) Austin
- Georgia (GA) Atlanta
- Utah (UT) Salt Lake City
- Arizona (AZ) Phoenix
- Hawaii (HI) Honolulu
- Colorado (CO) Denver
- Massachusetts (MA) Boston
- New York (NY) Albany
- Illinois (IL) Springfield
What was the Mayflower?
The Mayflower was the ship that in 1620 transported 102 English pilgrims, including a core group of separatists, to New England.Who were the Pilgrims?
The Pilgrims were a group of early settlers who journeyed to the present-day United States from England, settling in the Plymouth Colony. The colony, established in 1620, was the second successful English settlement in the United States of America, the first being the Jamestown Colony, founded in 1607.Who were the Puritans?
The Puritans were a group of people who grew discontent in the Church of England and worked towards religious, moral, and societal reforms.Who were the Quakers?
The Quakers were and still are ‘The Society of Friends’ or now frequently known as ‘The Religious Society of Friends’.Who helped the Pilgrims in America?
The Native Americans, who taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn and where to fish and trap beaver, especially Squanto.Who was…?
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John Smith: John Smith, Admiral of New England, was an English soldier, explorer, and author. He is considered to have played an important part in the establishment of the first permanent English settlement in North America. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony (based at Jamestown) between September 1608 and August 1609, and led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay. He was the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area and New England.
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John Rolfe: John Rolfe was one of the early English settlers of North America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony of Virginia and is known as the husband of Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Confederacy.
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Pocahontas: Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of a network of tributary tribal nations in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She is said to have saved the life of an Indian captive, Englishman John Smith, in 1607 by placing her head upon his own when her father raised his war club to execute him.
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Squanto or Tisquantum: Squanto was the Native American who assisted the Pilgrims after their first winter in the New World and was integral to their survival. He was a member of the Patuxet tribe, a tributary of the Wampanoag Confederacy.
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Samoset: Samoset was the first Native American to make contact with the Pilgrims. On March 16, 1621, the settlers were more than surprised when Samoset strolled straight through the middle of the encampment at Plymouth Colony and greeted them in English, which he had begun to learn from an earlier group of Englishmen to arrive in what is now Maine.
What were the Salem Witch trials?
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693.What was the “Boston Massacre”?
The Boston Massacre, known as the Incident on King Street by the British, was an incident on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers killed five civilian men and injured six others.What was the “Boston Tea Party”?
The “Boston Tea Party” (Destruction of the tea) was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies. A group of colonists (wearing Indian dress) boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it overboard.What was the Revolutionary War?
The Revolutionary War was a conflict between the original thirteen British colonies in North America against the Kingdom of Great Britain. It occurred between 1775 and 1783, finishing with the British defeat at the battle of Yorktown and the treaty of Paris.Who was the main writer of the Declaration of Independence?
Thomas Jefferson.When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?
On July 4th, 1776.What is the basic belief of the Declaration of Independence?
Freedom and equality.Explain the contribution made by:
- Thomas Jefferson: The creation of the Declaration of Independence
- Abraham Lincoln: He issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.
- Benjamin Franklin: He was the only man to sign all of these four major documents: Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the constitution of the United States, and the treaty of peace with Great Britain.
- George Washington: The hero of the Revolutionary War.
- Martin Luther King Jr.: For his struggle to end segregation of black people.
- John Kennedy: He originated the American space program. He also handled the Cuban missile crisis successfully. His actions played a role in the eventual end of the Cold War.
What happened in…?
- 1607: John Smith founded the Jamestown settlement.
- 1608: The Pilgrims moved.
- 1620: The Mayflower Compact was signed.
- 1621: A Native American named Samoset walked boldly into the colonists’ settlements. He gave the Pilgrims useful information about the peoples and places of the area.
- 1630: A fleet of ships carrying Puritan colonists left England for Massachusetts to seek religious freedom.
Why are the following places important?
- Massachusetts: The first English settlers in Massachusetts, the Pilgrims, established their settlement at Plymouth in 1620.
- Jamestown: The first permanent English settlement in the Americas.
- Plymouth: In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers left Plymouth for the New World and established Plymouth colonies, the second English settlement in what is now the United States of America.
