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The naming of the Americas, or America, occurred shortly after Christopher Columbus 's death in 1506. The earliest known use of the name America dates to April 25, 1507, when it was applied to what is now known as South America. [1] It is generally accepted that the name derives from Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer, who explored the new ...
The earliest known use of the name "America" dates to 1505, when German poet Matthias Ringmann used it in a poem about the New World. [2] The word is a Latinized form of the first name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who first proposed that the West Indies discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 were part of a previously unknown landmass, rather than the eastern limit of Asia.
The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. After European colonization of North America began in the late 15th century, wars and epidemics decimated Indigenous societies. Starting in 1585, the British colonized the Atlantic Coast, and by the 1760s, the ...
t. e. The history of the United States from 1776 to 1789 was marked by the nation's transition from the American Revolutionary War to the establishment of a novel constitutional order. As a result of the American Revolution, the thirteen British colonies emerged as a newly independent nation, the United States of America, between 1776 and 1789.
e. George Washington, a key Founding Father, was commanding general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and a Revolutionary hero, presided over the Constitutional Convention and became the nation's first president in April 1789. [1] The Founding Fathers of the United States, often simply referred to as the Founding Fathers or ...
The first documented use of the phrase "United States of America" is a letter from January 2, 1776. Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George Washington, wrote to Joseph Reed, Washington's aide-de-camp, seeking to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort.
European colonization of the Americas led to the rise of new cultures, civilizations and eventually states, which resulted from the fusion of Native American, European, and African traditions, peoples and institutions. The transformation of American cultures through colonization is evident in architecture, religion, gastronomy, the arts and ...
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] [Note 1] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a leading writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher. [1] Among the most influential intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States; a ...