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The first documented settlement of Europeans in the Americas was established by Norse people around 1000 AD in what is now Newfoundland, called Vinland by the Norse. Later European exploration of North America resumed with Christopher Columbus's 1492 expedition sponsored by Spain. English settlement began almost a century later.
The first religious services held in colonial America were Anglican services held in Jamestown, Virginia, according to the Book of Common Prayer. The practice of the religion of the Church of England in Jamestown predates that of the Pilgrim settlers who came on the Mayflower in 1620 and whose separatist faith motivated their move from Europe.
They started the first university, Harvard, in 1635 to train their ministers. They mostly settled in small villages for mutual support (nearly all of them had their own militias) and common religious activities. Shipbuilding, commerce, agriculture, and fishing were their main sources of income.
Alaska, the last major acquisition in North America, was purchased from Russia in 1867. Support for the independence of Cuba from the Spanish Empire, and the sinking of the USS Maine, led to the Spanish–American War in 1898, in which the United States gained Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and occupied Cuba for several years.
Between 1970 and 2007, the number of first-generation immigrants living in the United States quadrupled from 9.6 million to 38.1 million residents. [ 9 ] [ 10 ] Census estimates show 45.3 million foreign born residents in the United States as of March 2018 and 45.4 million in September 2021, the lowest three-year increase in decades.
It’s believed that humans first settled in North America about 14,000 years ago, but a study suggests our kind arrived on the continent some years earlier.
1526: Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón briefly establishes the failed settlement of San Miguel de Gualdape in South Carolina, the first site of enslavement of Africans in North America and of the first slave rebellion. 1527: Fishermen are using the harbor at St. John's, Newfoundland and other places on the coast.
Between 1815 and 1930, 60 million Europeans emigrated, of which 71% went to North America, 21% to Latin America, and 7% to Australia. [1] This mass immigration had as a backdrop economic and social problems in the Old World , allied to structural changes that facilitated the migratory movement between the two continents.