title: Education

text: Non-formal education includes adult basic education, adult literacy education or school equivalency preparation. In nonformal education someone (who is not in school) can learn literacy, other basic skills or job skills. Home education, individualized instruction (such as programmed learning), distance learning and computer-assisted instruction are other possibilities.


title: Education

text: Informal education is less organized. It may be a parent teaching a child how to prepare a meal or ride a bicycle. People can also get an informal education by reading many books from a library or educational websites. This may also be called self-education. Some quite famous men have been largely self-educated, like Alfred Russell Wallace.


title: Education

text: Unschooling is when kids learn as they go and do not go to traditional school buildings. Instead, they go on websites, play games, or engage in normal hobbies and learn along the way. The experience of children with "unstructured" lives is that they get into trouble.


title: Education

text: Deschooling is a more drastic approach. It advocates abolishing schools. It was put forward in the USA of the 1960s and 1970s. It is no longer an active movement.


title: Education

text: Many public schools (U.S. terminology) provide a free education through the government. Parents may send their own children to a private school, but they must pay for it. In some poorer places, some children cannot go to school, because their countries do not make education available, or because their families do not have enough money, or because the children have to work for money, or because the society has prejudice against education for girls.


title: Education

text: There are primary schools and secondary schools. In many places they are government funded. Colleges and universities usually charge fees (tuition payments) which may be different in different countries.


title: Knights of the Round Table

text: The Knights of the Round Table were characters in the legends about King Arthur. They were the best knights in King Arthur's kingdom, and lived in King Arthur's castle, Camelot. They were called the Knights of the "Round Table" because of a special table that was in Camelot, that was round instead of rectangular. This meant that everyone who sat around it was seen as trustworthy and equal.


title: Knights of the Round Table

text: In order to become a Knight of the Round Table, a knight had to prove he was chivalrous (polite) enough. In the legend, the knights swore a Code of Chivalry, which is much like an oath is today. This meant that they promised to uphold the rules given to them once they became a Knight of the Round Table.


title: Knights of the Round Table

text: Sir Thomas Malory wrote a book based on the legend of King Arthur. It was called "Le Morte d'Arthur". In it, he wrote his version of the Code of Chivalry:


title: Knights of the Round Table

text: In different stories, there are different numbers of knights, ranging from 12 to more than 150. The Winchester Round Table shows 25 Knights. The most commonly mentioned in literature include:


title: Knights of the Round Table

text: In the 2014 movie, "", each of the Kingsman agents is named after one of the knights of the Round Table. Gary "Eggsy" Unwin, the main character, has the code name 'Galahad'. This is also the code name of Harry Hart, Eggsy's mentor. Roxy Morton, the only female Kingsman, has the codename 'Lancelot'. 'Arthur' is the codename for the leader of Kingsman, while 'Merlin' is the codename for their trainer and tech coordinator.


title: Knights of the Round Table

text: One of the fictional "Fate" media franchise's most well known characters, "Saber" aka Artoria Pendragon, is a female character based on King Arthur. In the mobile game "Fate/Grand Order", she alongside various other Knights of the Round Table (Lancelot, Gawain, Bedivere, Tristan), as well as Mordred, can be summoned as usable characters. Additionally, in "Fate/Grand Order", Sir Galahad is the Heroic Spirit that was summoned into the body of another character in the game, Mash Kyrielight, and therefore is the one to bestow her his powers.


title: Keyboard (computer)

text: A computer keyboard is an input device that allows a person to enter letters, numbers, and other symbols (together, these are called characters) into a computer. It is one of the most used input devices for computers. Using a keyboard is often called typing.


title: Keyboard (computer)

text: A keyboard contains many mechanical switches or push-buttons called "keys". When one of these are pushed, an electrical circuit is closed, and the keyboard sends a signal to the computer that tells it what letter, number or symbol it would like to be shown on the screen. The computer then shows the character on the screen, usually at the place where the flashing text cursor is.


title: Keyboard (computer)

text: Besides entering characters, computer keyboards also have special keys that change the symbol (such as shift or caps lock) or give the computer special commands (such as the arrow keys, CTRL and ALT). Different computer operating systems use different special keys, or use them differently. Special commands can also be activated through combinations of keys, called keyboard shortcuts. Some of the most common shortcuts on Windows programs are: Ctrl + C, to copy some text or a picture; Ctrl + V, to paste what was copied; and Ctrl + F, to find a certain word on a document or web page.


title: Keyboard (computer)

text: A keyboard can be joined to a computer using a wire, but can also be wireless (like those that use Bluetooth). Most wired 21st century keyboards connect to a USB socket on the computer, but older ones use a round, purple DIN connector.


title: Keyboard (computer)

text: There are different types of keyboards. They can be based on the way the keys work; for example, laptops have keys that do not move a lot, because the keyboard has to be very thin in order to fit inside the laptop. On the other hand, video game players often like keyboards with keys that move a lot, so that they feel the key working. Gaming keyboards also need fast reaction times. In between these two types, an ergonomic keyboard is made to be easier for people to type for long periods of time, without hurting their hands or arms.


title: Keyboard (computer)

text: There are also different ways the keys on a keyboard are arranged, usually to deal with different regions and languages of the world. Most computer keyboards have the keys in six rows, but some laptops use only five or even four rows to save space. The most popular layout is called QWERTY, which is based on the first six letters on them. The QWERTY design was made so that the most common letters would not make the moving parts of a mechanical typewriter "jam", or stop working. Now, even though most people do not use typewriters anymore, the design stayed because people were used to it. Other layouts have been developed, for example the Dvorak keyboard, which puts the most common letters in the places that are easiest to reach.


title: Keyboard (computer)

text: Keystroke logging is making a record of each key that is pressed. Keystroke logging can be used to measure employee activity. Hackers can also use keystroke logging to get private information, such as passwords. This can be done by putting a piece of hardware in the keyboard or on the cable, or by installing malware in the computer. A wireless keyboard makes it especially easy for the hacker to detect the wireless signals.


title: Keyboard (computer)

text: The use of any keyboard may cause repetitive strain injury to the hands, wrists, arms, neck or back. The risks of injuries can be reduced by taking frequent, short breaks to get up and walk around, a couple of times every hour. Users should also vary tasks throughout the day, to avoid overuse of the hands and wrists. When using a keyboard, a person should keep the shoulders relaxed with the elbows at the side, with the keyboard and mouse positioned so that they are comfortable to use. The chair height and keyboard should be adjusted so that the wrists are straight, and not resting on sharp edges of tables or the computers themselves. Some technology ranging from special keyboards to pen-tablet interfaces or speech recognition software can reduce the risk of injury. Pause software reminds the user to pause frequently.


title: Keyboard (computer)

text: Researchers are studying if keyboards can spread diseases. Some keyboards were found to contain five times more germs than a toilet seat.


title: English language

text: English is a language that started in Anglo-Saxon England. It is originally from Anglo-Frisian and Old Saxon dialects. English is now used as a global language. There are about 375 million native speakers (people who use it as their first language) in the world.


title: English language

text: Frisian is the language closest to English. The vocabulary of English was influenced by other Germanic languages in the early Middle Ages and later by Romance languages, especially French.


title: English language

text: English is the only official language or one of the official languages of nearly 60 countries. It is also the main language of more countries in the world than any other. It is the primary language in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It is one of the official languages in Singapore, India, Hong Kong, and South Africa. It is widely spoken in parts of the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia.


title: English language

text: In 2005, it was estimated that there were over 2 billion speakers of English. English is the first foreign language for most learners who have another main language. It is an official language of the United Nations, European Union, and many other international organizations. It is the most widely-spoken Germanic language, with at least 70% of Germanic speakers speaking English. About 220 million others use it as their second language. It is, together with German, the most important language of science and technology. It is often used in work and travel and trade, and there are at least a billion people who are learning it. That makes English the largest language by number of speakers.


title: English language

text: English has changed and developed over time, like all other languages. The most obvious changes are the many words taken from Latin and Old French, which then came to Old English and then Modern English, which is used today.


title: English language

text: English grammar has also become very different from other Germanic languages, but it stayed different from Romance languages. Because nearly 60% of the vocabulary comes from Latin, English is sometimes called the Germanic language that is the most Latin, and it is often mistaken for being a Romance language.


title: English language

text: Germanic tribes (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes) came to Britain from around 449 AD. They made their home in the south and east of the island, pushing out the Celtic Britons who were there before them, or making them speak the English language instead of the old Celtic languages. Some people still speak Celtic languages today, in Wales (Welsh) and elsewhere. Gaelic is the Scottish Celtic language, still spoken by some in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. "Scots" is a dialect of English, taken from the English spoken in Northumbria. Irish Gaelic is spoken by very few people today.


title: English language

text: The Germanic dialects of the different tribes became what is now called Old English. The word "English" comes from the name of the Angles: "Englas". Old English did not sound or look much like the English spoken today. If English speakers today were to hear or read a passage in Old English, they would understand just a few words.


title: English language

text: The closest language to English that is still used today is Frisian, spoken by about 500,000 people living in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. It is much like English, and many words are the same. The two languages were even closer before Old English changed to Middle English. Today, speakers of the two languages would not be able to understand each other. Dutch is spoken by over 20 million people, and is more distant from English. German is even bigger, and even more distant. All these languages belong to the same West Germanic family as English.


title: English language

text: Many other people came to England later at different times, speaking different languages, and these languages added more words to make today's English. For example, around 800 AD, many Danish and Norse pirates, also called Vikings, came to the country, established Danelaw. So, English got many Norse loanwords. Their languages were Germanic languages, like Old English, but are a little different. They are called the North Germanic languages.


title: English language

text: When William the Conqueror took over England in 1066 AD, he brought his nobles, who spoke Norman, a language closely related to French. English changed a lot because it was mostly being spoken instead of written for about 300 years. All official documents were written in Norman French. English borrowed many words from Norman at that time, and also began to drop the old word endings. English of this time is called Middle English. Geoffrey Chaucer is a well known writer of Middle English. After more sound changes, Middle English became Modern English.


title: English language

text: English continued to take new words from other languages, for example mainly from French (around 30% to 40% of its words), but also Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. Because scientists from different countries needed to talk to one another, they chose names for scientific things in the languages they all knew: Greek and Latin. Those words came to English also, for example, "photography" ("photo-" means "light" and "-graph" means "picture" or "writing", in Greek. A photograph is a picture made using light), or "telephone". So, English is made of Old English, Danish, Norse, and French, and has been changed by Latin, Greek, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Dutch and Spanish, along with some words from other languages.


title: English language

text: English grammar has also changed, becoming simpler and less Germanic. The classic example is the loss of case in grammar. Grammatical case shows the role of a noun, adjective or pronoun in a sentence. In Latin (and other Indo-European languages), this is done by adding suffixes, but English usually does not. The style of English is that meaning is made clear more by context and syntax.


title: English language

text: The history of the British Empire has added to the spread of English. English is an important language in many places today. In Australia, Canada, India, Pakistan, South Africa, and the United States, among others (like those in the Commonwealth of Nations), English is the main language. Because the United Kingdom (the country where England is) and the United States have historically been powerful in commerce and government, many people find it helpful to learn English to communicate in science, business, and diplomacy. This is called learning English as an additional language, English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL).


title: English language

text: English literature has many famous stories and plays. William Shakespeare was a famous English writer of poems and plays. His English is Early Modern English, and not quite like what people speak or write today. Early Modern English sounded different, partly because the language was beginning a "great vowel shift". Later, many short stories and novels also used English. The novel as we know it is first seen in 18th century English. Therefore, today, many famous songs and movies (cinema films) use the English language.


title: English language

text: English grammar started out based on Old English, which is considered to be a Germanic language. After the Norman French conquered England in 1066, parts of the Latin language were brought to the English language by the Norman French.


title: English language

text: There are different types of nouns in English, like proper nouns and common noun. To show if a noun is plural, which means there is more than one of the noun, usually "-s" is added at the end of a word.


title: English language

text: Pronouns are words that take the place of a noun to avoid repetition. There are different types of pronouns in the English language. The most important ones are:


title: English language

text: Verbs in English show the action or the state of a sentence. Verbs can come in different shapes in a sentence based on the time or condition we are talking about. For example, the verb "eat" changes to "ate" in past.


title: English language

text: Adjectives are words that describe a noun. In English they always come before a noun to give you more information about that noun. You can see this in the sentence "the red apples are juicy."


title: English language

text: Written English uses a range of historical spelling patterns that changed over time due to political and cultural changes. As a result, different words can use the same letters and combinations for very different sounds. For example, "-ough" was once a guttural but has become different in "through" (threw), "rough" (ruff), "dough" (doe) or "cough" (coff).


title: English language

text: Many English-speaking countries spell words differently. Some words that are spelled one way in the United Kingdom and many other countries in the British Commonwealth are spelled differently in the United States.


title: English language

text: Nearly 60% of the vocabulary in the English language comes from Latin and its descendants, mainly French:


title: English language

text: However, the most common words are more often those of Germanic origin. Also, expressions and typical short phrases are often of Germanic origin.


title: Color of the day

text: Thai astrology has a color of the day for each day of the week. The color is based on the color of the God who protects the day or Navagraha. For example, the God of Sunday is Surya which has as the red color. These colors of the day are the traditional Thai birthday colors. For example, King Bhumibol Adulyadej was born on Monday, so on his birthday places in Thailand will be decorated with the color yellow.


title: Simple English Wikipedia

text: The Simple English Wikipedia is an English-language version of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, written in a language that is easy to understand but still natural and grammatical.


title: Simple English Wikipedia

text: All of the articles in the Simple English Wikipedia use shorter sentences and easier words and grammar than the regular English Wikipedia. The language used here is plain English, without idioms, slang and jargon (when possible). Some articles are written only in Basic English, which is even simpler. This makes articles easier to understand and edit. If someone cannot understand an idea in the regular English Wikipedia, they can read a Simple English article.


title: Simple English Wikipedia

text: When Simple English Wikipedia started making pages and allowing changes in 2003, the already had 150,000 articles. Seven other Wikipedias in other languages also had over 15,000 articles. Because the other Wikipedias already have a lot of articles, most Simple English articles are not new. They are usually simpler versions of already existing articles from the ordinary English Wikipedia. Right now, the Simple English Wikipedia has articles. Simple English Wikipedia started on September 18, 2001 and is the 49th largest Wikipedia, as of February 2022.


title: Café

text: A café is a type of restaurant which typically serves coffee and tea, in addition to light refreshments such as baked goods or snacks. The term "café" comes from the French word meaning "coffee".


title: Café

text: A café setting is known as a casual social environment where you can find people reading newspapers and magazines, playing board games, studying or chatting with others about current events. It is also regarded as a place where information can be exchanged.


title: Café

text: A café is sometimes called a coffeehouse or a coffee shop or tea shop in English, a café in French and a bar in Italian (cafe or café is the common spelling used in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese et al. however the word is spelled "caffè" in Italian). It shares some characteristics of a bar and some characteristics of a restaurant given its selection of foods and beverages served, but is distinct from a cafeteria which is a type of restaurant where customers can choose from many dishes displayed on a serving line. In some countries, cafés are designed to more closely resemble restaurants whereby offering a range of hot meals and possibly licensed to serve alcohol. Most British cafés however, do not sell alcohol likely due to the prominent pub culture.


title: Café

text: In the Netherlands, cannabis-selling cafés face an uncertain future under a planned new law banning smoking in public places. The cafés, which attract millions of tourists each year, allow customers to buy marijuana over the counter and openly smoke it. The acronym CAFE, Cannabis and Fine Edibles is used in Canada to represent the largest retail chain in the country, post-legalization.


title: Café

text: A new type of café, known as the Internet café, was introduced in the 1990s and went hand in hand with the rising prevalence of computers in society. Computers and Internet access in a contemporary atmosphere created a youthful, modern public space compared to existing locales including traditional bars and old-fashioned diners. Nowadays, many cafés offer public wireless Internet or even have computers, telephones, and newspapers for customer use. Further integrating internet usage to the café atmosphere, some stores like Starbucks allow you to order directly from your smartphone, tablet, or other devices through their free store app or websites online.


title: Café

text: More recently alongside the growing popularity of geek and gaming culture, gaming cafés have also begun to open in cities worldwide. These cafés offer a library of board games and tabletop games, from childhood classics such as Monopoly to indie games, for customers to play at their leisure for a nominal fee.


title: Ed Lauter

text: Edward Matthew "Ed" Lauter II (October 30, 1938 – October 16, 2013), known as Ed Lauter, was an American actor and stand-up comedian. He was known for his roles in "Family Plot", "Cujo", "Death Wish III", "Born on the Fourth of July", "", "The Number 23", and in "Trouble with the Curve".


title: Ed Lauter

text: Lauter was born on October 30, 1938 in Long Beach, New York. He studied at Long Island University. Lauter was married four times. His last marriage was to Marchell Doreen Williams from 2005 until his death in 2013. He had four children. Lauter died on October 16, 2013 in Los Angeles, California from mesothelioma, aged 74.


title: Traffic light

text: Traffic lights (or traffic signals) are lights used to control the movement of traffic. They are placed at road intersections and crossings. The different colors of lights tell drivers what to do.


title: Traffic light

text: Traffic lights change their colors in the same order every time. In most English-speaking countries, traffic lights usually change in this order:


title: Cricket

text: Cricket is a sport which is played between two teams of eleven players each (Cricket). One team, which is batting, tries to score runs, while the other team is fielding, and tries to prevent this. Runs are scored by hitting the ball, which is thrown by a player from the fielding team to a player from the batting team, across the boundary, or by the two batting players running back-and-forth between the two wickets.


title: Cricket

text: The wickets are sets of three small, wooden posts that are at each end of a rectangle of short grass called 'the pitch', which is 11 yards long. The pitch is inside a much larger oval of grass called the 'area of play'. The area of play is a 30 yard circle inside the cricket ground or stadium. The fielding team can attempt to get batting players "out" in a number of ways. When a player is out, a teammate will replace them in the field. When a team no longer has two "not-out" players left to score, then the other team gets the chance to try to score. In shorter games of cricket, a team may also have to stop batting when the ball has been thrown to their players a certain number of times. After both teams have had enough chances to score, the team with the most runs wins.


title: Cricket

text: The game started to gain popularity in England in the 10th century. The earliest definite reference to the sport is in a court case of 1598. The Guildford court heard John Derrick, a coroner, that fifty years earlier, "he and diverse of his fellows did run and play [on the common land] at cricket". Later, the game spread to countries of the British Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries.


title: Cricket

text: Today, it is a popular sport in England, Australia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, South Africa, New Zealand, the West Indies and several other countries such as Afghanistan, Ireland, Kenya, Scotland, the Netherlands, and Zimbabwe.


title: Cricket

text: There are two teams: The team bowling has 11 players on the field. The team batting has two players, one at each end of the pitch (also sometimes called the wicket).


title: Cricket

text: The captain of the bowling team chooses a bowler from his team; the other players are called 'fielders'.


title: Cricket

text: The batsman is trying to defend the wicket from getting hit with the ball. He does this with a bat. When he hits the ball with his bat, he may run toward the other wicket.


title: Cricket

text: When a batsman is out, another comes onto the field to take his place. The innings is over when ten wickets are taken (i.e. ten of the eleven batsmen are out). After this, the team which was the 'fielding' team becomes the 'batting' team. They now have to score more runs than the other team managed to score. If they score more runs before ten wickets are taken, they win. If they do not, the other team wins.


title: Cricket

text: In a one-day game, each side has one innings, and innings are limited to a certain number of overs. In longer formats each side has two innings, and there is no specific limit to the number of overs in an innings.


title: Cricket

text: The countries where cricket is most popular compete in international matches (games between countries) that last up to 5 days, which are called Test matches. Those countries are England, Australia, West Indies, South Africa, New Zealand, India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. The West Indies are a group of Caribbean countries that play together as a team. Several other countries have more junior status. The test match idea was invented by teams from England and Australia in the 19th century.Ireland and Afghanistan are the new teams which can play Test cricket.


title: Cricket

text: Cricket is also played in Kenya, Canada, Bermuda, Scotland, Holland and Namibia; the national teams of those countries can play one-day international matches, but do not play test matches.


title: Cricket

text: A cricket field is where cricket is played. It is circular or oval-shaped grassy ground. There are no fixed dimensions for the field. Its diameter usually varies between 450 feet (137 m) to 500 feet (152 m).


title: Cricket

text: Test matches are the top international matches played between countries. The main point of test cricket is to test young players. The countries permitted to play test matches are accredited by the ICC: the International Cricket Council. The twelve countries are listed below, with 'West Indies',' England' counting for this purpose as a country. Tests last for up to five days (This is why many also call it "5 day cricket.") and can still end in a draw match : it is the longest format of cricket.


title: Cricket

text: Called counties in England, and states in Australia and islands in the West Indies. These are usually four day matches, but are sometimes played over three days.


title: Cricket

text: In these games, the length is determined by the number of overs, and each side has one innings only. A special formula, known as the 'Duckworth–Lewis System (DLS)' is applied if rain reduces the time for play. It calculates the target score for the team batting second in a limited overs match interrupted by weather or other circumstance.


title: Cricket

text: ODIs are usually restricted to 50 overs batting for each side and each bowler can bowl up to 10 overs maximum. The highest team score is England 481-6 against Australia on June 19, 2018. The highest individual score is 264 off 173 balls by Rohit Sharma for India against Sri Lanka.


title: Cricket

text: Twenty20 cricket has 20 overs for each side and each bowler can bowl up to 4 overs maximum unlike 10 overs in an ODI match. The highest team score is 263/5 by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) against Pune Warriors India (PWI) in the 2013 IPL season. The highest individual score is 175* off 69 balls by Chris Gayle for RCB in the same match.


title: 12-hour clock

text: The 12-hour clock is a way of dividing the 24 hours of the day into two sections. The two halves are called ante meridiem (a.m.) and post meridiem (p.m.).


title: 12-hour clock

text: Both names are from Latin, and numbered from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. Time from midnight to noon is a.m. and from noon to midnight p.m. The table at right shows how it relates to the 24-hour clock.


title: United States

text: The United States of America (U.S.A or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S or US) or America, is a sovereign country mostly in North America. It is divided into 50 states. Forty-eight of these states and the District of Columbia border each other between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. They are bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwestern area of the continent and is separated from the other 48 states by Canada making it an exclave. Alaska is bordered by Canada to its east and south and by Russia to its west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is a set of islands in the mid-Pacific located within Polynesia and is about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) from the mainland. The country also possesses territories, and insular areas, in the Caribbean and Pacific. The capital city is Washington, D.C and the largest city by population is New York City with a population of 8.8 million people. And with a population of 331 million people, the United States is the third most populated country in the world. And with an area 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km) it is the third or fourth-largest country in the world by total area.


title: United States

text: The land that would one day become the United States was first settled by migrating tribes from Siberia that walked across a bridge of ice about 20,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century with several European nations setting up colonies in North America.


title: United States

text: The nation was founded by the thirteen colonies of Great Britain along the Atlantic coast. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence, which announced their independence from Great Britain and their creation of a cooperative union. The disobedient colonies defeated Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, making it the first successful colonial war of independence In history. The Philadelphia Convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its approval the following year made the states part of a single republic with a strong central government. The Bill of Rights, making up ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many basic civil rights and freedoms, was approved in 1791.


title: United States

text: In the 19th century, the United States pursued a policy of manifest destiny where they believed that it was their god given right to expand across the North American continent. They conquered and took over native lands and bought territory from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and took over the Republic of Texas and later the Republic of Hawaii.


title: United States

text: Arguments between the farming-based South and industrial North over the growth of the institution of slavery and states' rights began the American Civil War. In 1861 The southern states separated from the union and founded their own country called the Confederate States of America after anti-slavery candidate, Abraham Lincoln won the Presidential election. The Union's victory over the Confederacy prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. By the 1870s, the national wealth was the world's largest. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a military power. In 1945, the United States came out of World War II as a Superpower and was the first country with nuclear weapons. After World War II the United States along with its allies founded the United Nations. Today the United States is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. After the end of World War II the United States and Soviet Union were engaged in an arms race called the Cold War. The United States participated in the Space Race against the Soviet Union that produced rapid advancements in rocket technology. They created the Apollo 11 rocket and it was the first to send people to the moon. It was done by NASA, an American space agency. It went up to space on July 16, 1969, carrying three astronauts: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon, while Collins stayed in orbit around the Moon. In 1991 the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union broke up, leaving the United States as the only Superpower.


title: United States

text: Today, the United States is one of the world's most ethnically mixed and multicultural nations, and is the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the largest national economy in the world, with an estimated 2020 gross domestic product (GDP) of US$ 20.9 trillion (about a quarter of worldwide GDP).


title: United States

text: The United States is a federal republic of fifty states, a federal district, and several territories.


title: United States

text: The land area of the contiguous United States is . Alaska, separated from the contiguous United States by Canada, is the largest state at . Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, is in area.


title: United States

text: The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia, Canada, and China or behind Russia, Canada, and ahead of China. The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and how the total size of the United States is measured: calculations range from to to . Measured by only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.


title: United States

text: The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north-south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast.


title: United States

text: The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. Further west is the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua and Mojave. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast, both ranges reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet.


title: United States

text: The United States, with its large size and geographical variety, includes most climate types. To the east of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The southern tip of Florida is tropical, as is Hawaii. The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-dry. Much of the Western mountains are alpine. The climate is dry in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon and Washington and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Extreme weather is not unusual—the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes happen within the country, mainly in the Midwest's Tornado Alley.


title: United States

text: The U.S. ecology is considered "megadiverse"; about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland. The United States is home to more than 400 mammal, 750 bird, and 500 reptile and amphibian species. About 91,000 insect species have been described.


title: United States

text: The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats. They are watched by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. There are fifty-eight national parks, and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas. The United States government owns 28.8% of the country's land area. Most of this is protected, but some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching. 2.4% is used for military purposes.


title: United States

text: A example of animals that are native to the United States such as opossums, raccoons, pumas, and bears. Endangered animals in the United States include the jaguar, the California condor, and the Florida panther.


title: United States

text: There are many types of small trees and shrubs in the United States. Some of these are hackberries, hawthorn, serviceberry, blackberry, wild cherry, dogwood, and snowberry. Wildflowers grow all around the United States. They even grow in deserts and places with mountains. Wildflowers include forget-me-not, fringed and closed gentians, jack-in-the-pulpit, black-eyed Susan, columbine, and common dandelion, as well as many types of aster, orchid, lady's slipper, and wild rose.


title: United States

text: It is believed that the indigenous peoples of the continental United States, including the natives of Alaska, moved in from Asia. They began arriving twelve or forty thousand years ago, if not earlier. Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in the southeast, developed advanced farming, grand construction, and state-level communities. The native population of America decreased after Europeans arrived, and for different reasons, mostly sicknesses such as smallpox and measles.


title: United States

text: In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, under contract to the Spanish crown, reached some Caribbean islands, making the first contact with the native people. On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "La Florida"—the first recorded European coming on what would become the U.S. mainland. Spanish settlements in the area were followed by ones in the present-day southwestern United States that drew thousands through Mexico. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; France eventually claimed much of the North American interior, down to the Gulf of Mexico. The first successful English settlements were the Colony of Virginia in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of relocation; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to Britain's American colonies. Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.


title: United States

text: Tensions between American colonials and the British during the rebel period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 through 1781. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, a meeting in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army led by George Washington.The Congress said that "all men are created equal" and are born with "certain natural rights," and adopted the Declaration of Independence, written mostly by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That date is now celebrated every year as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak federal government that operated until 1789. Morocco was the first country in the world to recognize America’s independence.


title: United States

text: After the British defeat by American forces helped by the French, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States and the states' sovereignty over American land west to the Mississippi River. A constitutional convention was organized in 1787 by people who wanted to establish a stronger national government, with powers of taxation. The United States Constitution was approved in 1788, and the new republic's first Senate, House of Representatives, and President—George Washington—took office in 1789. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and certifying a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.


title: United States

text: Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; a protected the African slave trade only until 1808. The Northern states permanently stopped slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution." The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, made evangelicalism a force behind different social reform movements, including abolitionism.


title: United States

text: Americans' eagerness to expand westward caused a long series of Indian Wars and an Indian removal policy that stripped the native peoples of their land. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed land under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size. The War of 1812, declared against Britain over different complaints and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism. A series of U.S. military invasions into Florida led Spain to give up it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The United States took over the Republic of Texas in 1845. The idea of Manifest destiny became popular during this time. The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. The U.S. victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest. The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further encouraged western relocation. New railways made relocation easier for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, or buffalo, were killed for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread. The loss of the buffalo, which were valuable to the plains Indians, caused many native cultures to become gone forever.


title: United States

text: Tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments over the relationship between the state and federal governments, as well as violent conflicts over the spread of slavery into new states. Abraham Lincoln, a candidate of the most antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860. Before he took office, seven slave states declared their secession—which the federal government maintained was illegal—and formed the Confederate States of America. With the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, the American Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation committed the Union to end slavery. Following the Union victory in 1865, three changes to the U.S. Constitution secured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves, made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a big increase in federal power.


title: United States

text: After the war, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln caused the Reconstruction, where policies were put together directed at getting back and rebuilding the Southern states while securing the rights of the newly freed slaves. The resolution of the disputed 1876 presidential election by the Compromise of 1877 ended this era, and the Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans. In the North, urbanization and a never-before-seen inflow of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe made the country's industrialization grow rapidly. The wave of immigration, lasting until 1929, gave labor and changed American culture. High tax protections, national infrastructure building, and new banking laws encouraged growth also. The 1867 Alaska Purchase from Russia completed the country's mainland expansion. The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 was the last major armed conflict of the Indian Wars. In 1893, the native monarchy of the Pacific Kingdom of Hawaii was ended in a secret and successful plan led by American residents. the United States took over the archipelago in 1898. Victory in the Spanish–American War the same year proved that the United States was a world power and led to the addition of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The Philippines gained independence fifty years later. Puerto Rico and Guam are still U.S. territories.


title: United States

text: The First World War started in Europe in 1914. The United States said it was neutral and did not join the war at first. Later, the Americans helped the British and French, even though many citizens, especially those from Ireland and Germany, were against it. In 1917, the United States joined the Allies. They helped defeat the Central Powers. At the end fo the war, many Americans did not want to stay involved in Europe. The Senate did not approve the Treaty of Versailles (1919). The United States stayed out of the League of Nations. The country became more isolationist.


title: United States

text: In 1920, the Women's rights movement gained the approval of a constitutional amendment to grant women the right to vote. For most of the 1920s, the country enjoyed a period of success, decreasing the inequality in the balance of payments while profiting from industrial farms. This period, known as the Roaring Twenties, ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that triggered the Great Depression.


title: United States

text: After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a series of policies that increased government interference in the economy. From 1920 to 1933 a prohibition banning alcohol was in place. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s left many poor farmer communities and encouraged a new wave of emigration to the West Coast.


title: United States

text: The United States, officially neutral during the early stages of World War II, began supplying supplies to the Allies in March 1941, through the Lend-Lease program. On December 7, 1941, the country joined the Allies' fight against the Axis Powers, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. World War II boosted the economy by providing investment capital and jobs, making many women enter the labor market. Of the significant fighters, the United States was the only nation to be enriched by war. The discussions at Bretton Woods and Yalta created a new system of an international organization that placed the country and the Soviet Union at the heart of world affairs. In 1945, when the end of the Second World War in Europe came, and international gathering held in San Francisco drafted the Charter of the United Nations, which came into force after the war. Having developed the first nuclear weapon, the government decided to use it in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of that same year. Japan gave up on September 2, ending the war.


title: United States

text: After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union started the Cold War. This was because both of them thought their own type of government was the best. The United States was supported by NATO, and the Soviet Union was supported by the Warsaw Pact. They never fought each other directly, but did many proxy wars. In the Korean War, the United States sent soldiers to help South Korea. They fought Chinese soldiers that were helping communist North Korea. In the 1960s, the Cuban Missile Crisis almost led to a real war between the two countries. However, the Soviets agreed to take their missiles out of Cuba if the United States did not attack them. Because of the Cold War, many Americans were scared of communist spies taking over the United States. This started the Second Red Scare, and hundreds of people were arrested because they were communist. Later, many cases in the Supreme Court made arresting communists illegal, because it is free speech.


title: United States

text: In 1957, the Soviet Union launched a satellite named Sputnik 1 into outer space. Later, they were the first to put people in outer space. Because of this, President John F. Kennedy wanted to send a man to the Moon. This started the Space Race, and the United States made the Apollo program, a project used for outer space. In 1969, the United States launched Apollo 11, and was the first country to send people to the Moon.


title: United States

text: The economy of the United States grew a lot. In the 1950s and 1960s, Americans had the highest average income in the world. Because of this, many people moved to large cities and suburbs, and had more children. The country built the Interstate Highway System, which made it easier to travel and move things across the country. In 1959, Alaska and Hawaii became U.S. states.


title: United States

text: There were many social movements in the United States during this time. The Civil Rights Movement wanted to give African Americans more rights. It was led by people such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. It was very successful, and helped make many laws that protected African Americans, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968. John F. Kennedy was murdered in 1963, and Lyndon B. Johnson became the President. Johnson sent United States soldiers to the Vietnam War, and many people did not like this. This started the counterculture movement. Counterculture included many things, such as people who wanted black nationalism, peace, and more rights for women. In 1969, the Stonewall riots in New York marked the start of the gay rights movement.


title: United States

text: In 1974, Richard Nixon became the first President to resign. This was because of the Watergate scandal, where people broke into the Democratic headquarters and took a lot of information to help Nixon. During the Yom Kippur War, the United States helped Israel. Because of this, countries in OPEC did not let the United States buy their oil. This started an oil crisis. In the 1970s, the country's economy had a problem with stagflation, something that happens when prices go up but production does not. When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, he tried to stop this with lower taxes and less government control over the economy. These changes were called Reaganomics. The Cold War ended in 1991. This was because the Soviet Union dissolved. With no Soviet Union, the United States became the largest superpower in the world.


title: United States

text: Under President George H. W. Bush, the country took on a global dominant role worldwide, as in the Gulf War (1991). The longest economic expansion in modern American history, from March 1991 to March 2001, spanned the presidency of Bill Clinton and the dot-com bubble. A civil lawsuit and a sex scandal led to his impeachment in 1998, although he managed to finish his period. The 2000 presidential election was one of the most competitive in American history, it was settled by the Supreme Court: George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush, became president, even though he gained fewer votes than his opponent Al Gore.


title: United States

text: On September 11, 2001, the terrorists of the Al-Qaeda group attacked the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City (which were destroyed) and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., in a series of attacks that ended the lives of nearly three thousand people. In response, the Bush administration launched the "War on Terror." At the end of 2001, U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan, toppled the Taliban government and destroyed Al-Qaeda's training camps. Taliban insurgents continue to fight a guerrilla war. In 2002, Bush began to push for a regime change to take place in Iraq. With NATO's lack of support and without a clear UN order for military intervention, Bush organized the coalition of the willing; The coalition forces quickly invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled the statue of dictator Saddam Hussein. The following year, Bush was re-elected as the most voted president in an election.


title: United States

text: In 2005, Hurricane Katrina, which would end up being the deadliest natural disaster in national history, caused severe destruction along the Gulf Coast: the city of New Orleans was devastated, with 1833 dead.


title: United States

text: On November 4, 2008, during a global economic downturn, Barack Obama was elected president, having been the first African American to take office. In May 2011, American Special forces managed to kill Osama bin Laden, hiding in Pakistan. The following year, Barack Obama was re-elected. Under his second term, he led the war against the Islamic State and restored diplomatic relations with Cuba.


title: United States

text: On November 8, 2016, the Republican Party leader Donald Trump defeated former First Lady Hillary Clinton for presidency in an unusual election and whose plans have been described by political analysts as populist, protectionist and nationalist, assuming office on January 20, 2017.


title: United States

text: The massacres in Orlando of June 12, 2016 at the gay disco "Pulse" (51 dead) and in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017 (60) are listed as the largest massacres in the country since 9/11. The Murder of George Floyd in late May 2020 sparked protests all over the world that demanded racial justice. On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. was stormed during a riot and violent attack against the U.S. Congress.


title: United States

text: The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a constitutional republic and representative democracy, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law." The government is controlled by a system of checks and balances from the United States Constitution. The constitution is the country's main legal document. There are three branches. They are the "executive branch", the "legislative branch", and the "judicial branch". State governments and the federal government work in very similar ways. Each state has its own executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The executive branch of a state government is led by a governor, instead of a president.


title: United States

text: The executive branch is the part of the government that enforces the law. Members of the U.S. Electoral College elect a president who is the leader of the executive branch, as well as the leader of the armed forces. The president may veto a bill that Congress has passed, so it does not become a law. The President may also make "executive orders" to ensure that people follow the law.


title: United States

text: The president is in charge of many departments that control much of the day-to-day actions of the government. For example, Department of Commerce makes rules about trade. The president chooses the heads of these departments and also nominates federal judges. However, the Senate, part of the legislative branch, must agree with all of the people the president chooses. The president may serve two 4-year terms.


title: United States

text: The legislative branch makes laws. The legislative branch is called the United States Congress. Congress is divided into two "houses".


title: United States

text: One house is the House of Representatives. The Representatives are each elected by voters from set areas within the states. The number of Representatives a state has is based on how many people live there. Representatives serve two-year terms. The total number of representatives today is 435. The leader of the House of Representatives is the Speaker of the House.


title: United States

text: The other house is the Senate. In the Senate, each state is represented equally, by two senators. Because there are 50 states, there are 100 senators. The President's treaties or appointments of officials need the Senate's approval. Senators serve six-year terms. The Vice President of the United States serves as president of the Senate. In practice, the vice president is usually absent from the Senate, and a senator serves as president pro tempore, or temporary president, of the Senate.


title: United States

text: Representatives and senators propose laws, called "bills", in their respective houses. A bill may be voted upon by the entire house right away or may first go to a small group, known as a committee, which may recommend a bill for a vote by the whole house. If one house votes to pass a bill, the bill then gets sent to the other house; if both houses vote for it, it is then sent to the president, who may sign the bill into law or veto it. If the president vetoes the bill, it is sent back to Congress. If Congress votes again and passes the bill with at least a two-thirds majority, the bill becomes law and cannot be vetoed by the president.


title: United States

text: Under the American system of federalism, Congress may not make laws that directly control the states; instead, Congress may use the promise of federal funds, or special circumstances such as national emergencies, to encourage the states to follow federal law. This system is both complex and unique.


title: United States

text: The judicial branch is the part of government that interprets what the law means. The Judicial Branch is made up of the Supreme Court and many lower courts. If the Supreme Court decides that a law is not allowed by the Constitution, the law is said to be "struck down" and is no longer a valid law.


title: United States

text: The Supreme Court is made up of nine judges, called justices, who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. One of these justices, called the chief justice, heads the court. A Supreme Court justice serves until he or she dies or resigns (quits in the middle of his or her term). When that happens, the president nominates someone new to replace the justice who left. If the Senate agrees with that choice, the person becomes a justice. If the Senate does not agree with the president's choice, then the president must nominate someone else.


title: United States

text: Famous court cases such as "Marbury v Madison" (which was decided in 1803) have firmly established that the Supreme Court is the ultimate interpreter of the United States Constitution and has the power to strike down any law that conflicts with it.


title: United States

text: The United States of America consists of 50 states, 5 territories, and 1 district (Washington D.C.). States can make laws about things inside the state, but federal law is about things dealing with more than one state or dealing with other countries. In some areas, if the federal government makes laws that say different things from the state laws, people must follow the federal law because the state law is not a law anymore. Each state has a constitution of its own, different from the federal (national) Constitution. Each of these is like the federal Constitution because they say how each state's government is set up, but some also talk about specific laws.


title: United States

text: The federal and most state governments are dominated by two political parties: the Republicans and the Democrats. There are many smaller parties; the largest of these are the Libertarian Party and the Green Party. People help in political campaigns that they like. They try to persuade politicians to help them; this is called lobbying. All Americans are allowed to do these things, but some have and spend more money than others, or in other ways do more in politics. Some people think this is a problem, and lobby for rules to be made to change it.


title: United States

text: Since 2021, the president is a Democrat, and Congress is also Democrat-controlled, so the Democrats have more power in the federal government. There are still many powerful Republicans who can try to stop the Democrats from doing things that they believe will be bad for the country. Also, members of a party in power do not always agree on what to do. If enough people decide to vote against Democrats in the next election, they will lose power. In a republic like the United States, no party can do whatever they want. All politicians have to argue, compromise, and make deals with each other to get things done. They have to answer to the people and take responsibility for their mistakes.


title: United States

text: The USA's large cultural, economic, and military influence has made the foreign policy of the United States, or relations with other countries, a topic in American politics, and the politics of many other countries.


title: United States

text: The United States conquered and bought new lands over time, and grew from the original 13 colonies in the east to the current 50 states, of which 48 of them are joined together to make up the contiguous United States. These states, called the "lower 48", can all be reached by road without crossing a border into another country. They go from the Atlantic to the east to the Pacific in the west. There are two other states which are not joined to the lower 48 states. Alaska can be reached by passing through British Columbia and the Yukon, both of which are part of Canada. Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.


title: United States

text: Washington, D.C., the national capital, is a federal district that was split from the states of Maryland and Virginia in 1791. Not part of any US state, it used to be in the shape of a square, with the land west of the Potomac River coming from Virginia and the land east of the river coming from Maryland. In 1846, Virginia took back its part of the land. Some people living in DC want it to become a state, or for Maryland to take back its land, so that they can have the right to vote in Congress.


title: United States

text: The United States territories and possessions consist of sixteen lands that do not state, many of which are colonial territories. None of them have any land borders with the rest of the US. People live in five of these places, which are "de facto" American:


title: United States

text: The Philippines was a possession of the United States. Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and other Pacific island nations were governed by the United States as a United Nations "Trust Territory". All of these places have become independent: the Philippines in 1946, Palau in 1947, and Micronesia in 1986.


title: United States

text: The U.S. armed forces has bases in many countries, and the U.S. Navy's base at Guantanamo Bay was rented from Cuba after that country had a Communist revolution.


title: United States

text: All the states are divided into administrative subdivisions. Most of them are called counties, but Louisiana uses the word "parish," and Alaska uses the word "borough."


title: United States

text: There are many cities in the United States. One city in each state is the state capital, where the government of the state meets and the governor works. This city is not always the largest in its state. For example, the city with the most people living in is New York City in New York State, but the state capital is Albany. Some other big cities are Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Seattle, Washington; Miami, Florida; Indianapolis, Indiana; Las Vegas, Nevada; Houston and Dallas, Texas; Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Boston, Massachusetts; Denver, Colorado; St. Louis, Missouri, Memphis, Tennessee, Atlanta, Georgia, San Francisco, San Diego and Detroit, Michigan.


title: United States

text: The United States is very influential in global economics, politics, and the military. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and the headquarters of the United Nations is in New York City. It is a member of the G7, G20, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Almost all countries have embassies in Washington, D.C., and many have consulates around the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host American diplomatic missions. However, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, and Taiwan do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States. The United States has a "special relationship" with the United Kingdom and strong ties with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Israel.


title: United States

text: The president is the commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The United States Department of Defense administers the armed forces, including the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force. The Coast Guard is run by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and by the Department of the Navy during times of war. In 2008, the armed forces had 1.4 million personnel on active duty, along with several hundred thousand each in the Reserves and National Guard for a total of 2.3 million troops. The Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not including contractors.


title: United States

text: The military budget of the United States in 2011 was more than $700 billion, 41% of global military spending and equal to the next 14 largest national military expenditures combined. At 4.7% of GDP, the rate was the second-highest among the top 15 military spenders, after Saudi Arabia. U.S. defense spending as a percentage of GDP ranked 23rd globally in 2012 according to the CIA. The proposed base Department of Defense budget for 2012, $553 billion, was a 4.2% increase over 2011; an additional $118 billion was proposed for the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The last American troops serving in Iraq departed in December 2011; 4,484 service members were killed during the Iraq War. Approximately 90,000 U.S. troops were serving in Afghanistan in April 2012; by November 8, 2013 2,285 had been killed during the War in Afghanistan.


title: United States

text: The United States has a capitalist economy. The country has rich mineral resources, with many gold, coal, and uranium deposits. Farming makes the country among the top producers of, among others, corn (maize), wheat, sugar, and tobacco. Housing contributes about 15% to the Gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States. America produces cars, airplanes, and electronics. About 3/4 of Americans work in the service industry.


title: United States

text: The United States of America has people of many different race and ethnic backgrounds. 80% of the people in the United States descend from European immigrants. Many people are descended from Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Africa, and Italy. 13% of the people in the United States are African-American. Most of them descend from the African slaves that were brought to America. African Americans are concentrated in the Southern United States. Asian-Americans make up only 5% of the population in America but make up a bigger portion in the west coast. For example, in California, Asian-Americans make up 13% of the population of that state. Hispanic-Americans or people of Latin origins make up 15% of the nation. Mexicans are the largest Hispanic national group, followed by Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Salvadorans and Dominicans. The original peoples, called Native American, American Indians, or Amerindians and Inuit (Eskimos) are a very small group.


title: United States

text: 11% of the people in the United States are foreign-born. 18% speak a language other than English at home. For people 25 and older, 80% are high school graduates while 25% have a bachelor's degree or higher.


title: United States

text: The 2000 Census counted self-reported ancestry. It identified 43 million German-Americans, 30.5 million Irish-Americans, 24.9 million African-Americans, 24.5 million English-Americans, and 18.4 million Mexican Americans.


title: United States

text: The United States has the largest number of immigrants of any country in the world. The United States attracts immigrants from other countries due to the American Dream. Most immigrants in the United States come from Mexico, China, India, the Philippines and El Salvador.


title: United States

text: The social structure of the United States has a big range. This means that some Americans are much, much richer than others. The average (median) income for an American was $37,000 a year in 2002. However, the richest 1% of Americans have as much money as the poorest 90%. 51% of all households have access to a computer and 41% had access to the Internet in 2000, a figure which had grown to 75% in 2004. Also, 67.9% of American families owned their homes in 2002. There are 200 million cars in the United States, two for every three Americans. The debt has grown to over $21,000,000,000,000.


title: United States

text: There are many different religions in the U.S. Statistically, the largest religion is Christianity, including groups such as Catholicism, Protestantism, and Mormonism. Other religions include Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Unitarian Universalism, Wicca, Druidry, Baha'i, Raelism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, and Jainism. Religions which were founded within the United States include Eckankar, Satanism, and Scientology. Native American religions have various animistic beliefs.


title: United States

text: The United States is one of the most religious countries in the Western World, and most Americans believe in God. The number of Christians in the U.S. has gone down. 86.2% called themselves Christian in 1990 and 78.4% said this in 2007. The others include Judaism (2.3%), Islam (0.8%), Buddhism (0.7%), Hinduism (0.4%), and Unitarian Universalism (0.3%). Those who have no religion are at 16.1%. There is a large difference between those who say that they belong to a religion and those who are members of a religious body of that religion.


title: United States

text: Doubts about the existence of a God, gods or goddesses are higher among young people. Among the non-religious population of the U.S., there are deists, humanists, ignotic, atheists, and agnostics.


title: United States

text: English (American English) is the de facto national language. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2010, about 230 million, or 80% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by 12% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught second language. Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in at least twenty-eight states. Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii by state law.


title: United States

text: While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French. Other states, such as California, order the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms. Many jurisdictions with large numbers of non-English speakers produce government materials, especially voting information, in the most commonly spoken languages in those jurisdictions.


title: United States

text: Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by American Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico and is more widely spoken than English there.


title: United States

text: In most states, children are required to attend school from the age of six or seven (generally, kindergarten or first grade) until they turn eighteen (generally bringing them through twelfth grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at sixteen or seventeen. About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. Just over 2% of children are homeschooled.


title: United States

text: American popular culture goes out to many places in the world. It has a large influence on most of the world, especially the Western world. American music is heard all over the world, and American movies and television shows can be seen in most countries.


title: United States

text: The American flag is made up of 50 stars on a blue background and has 13 stripes, seven red and six white. It is one of many symbols of the United States like the Bald Eagle. The 50 stars represent the 50 states. The red stands for courage, the blue stands for justice, and the white represents peace and cleanliness. The 13 stripes represent the 13 original colonies.


title: United States

text: A hamburger is one of the popular foods of the United States. Fast food in the United States is home to many regional cuisines such as the Cuisine of the Southern United States, also known as Southern food. There are Americanized versions of Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Italian and Mexican cuisine. Native American cuisine is the cuisine of the indigenous Native Americans. A lot of American dishes are influenced by many countries around the world. American cuisine has Native American, British, French, German, and Spanish influences. Soul food is traditional southern African American food.


title: United States

text: The most popular genres in the United States are Rock and roll, pop, country, R&B, and hip hop. Native American music is the indigenous music of the United States.


title: United States

text: Native Americans played lacrosse before Europeans arrived. Baseball is the country sport for the United States, and American football is the most popular sport. Basketball is also very popular in the USA, which the USA has its own leauge called the NBA.


title: Solar System

text: The Solar System is the Sun and all the objects that orbit around it. The Sun is orbited by planets, asteroids, comets and other things.


title: Solar System

text: The Solar System is about 4.6 billion years old. It formed by gravity in a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter came together in the center, and the rest flattened into an orbiting disk that became the Solar System. It is thought that almost all stars form by this process.


title: Solar System

text: The Sun is a star. It makes up 99.9% of the Solar System's mass. This means that it has strong gravity. The other objects are pulled into orbit around the Sun. The Sun is mostly made out of hydrogen, and some helium and higher elements.


title: Solar System

text: There are eight planets in the Solar System. From closest to farthest from the Sun, they are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The first four planets are called terrestrial planets. They are mostly made of rock and metal, and they are mostly solid. The last four planets are called gas giants. This is because they are much larger than other planets and are mostly made of gas.


title: Solar System

text: It is almost certain that the planets were disturbed early in the evolution of the Solar System. This is discussed under "Grand tack hypothesis" below.


title: Solar System

text: Titan is one of Saturn’s moons. It is the only moon in the solar system to have an atmosphere, which is mainly composed of nitrogen.


title: Solar System

text: The Solar System also contains other things. There are asteroid belts, mostly between Mars and Jupiter. Further out than Neptune, there is the Kuiper belt and the scattered disc. These areas have dwarf planets, including Pluto, Makemake, Haumea, Ceres and Eris. There are thousands of very small objects in these areas. There are also comets, centaurs, and interplanetary dust.


title: Solar System

text: In Ancient Greece, Aristarchus of Samos proposed the heliocentric model of the Solar System, where the Sun, is at the center of the known universe. He is sometimes known as the "Greek Copernicus".


title: Solar System

text: Six of the planets, and the six largest dwarf planets, are orbited by moons. There are about 200 moons in the Solar System. Mercury and Venus have no moons, and Jupiter and Saturn have the largest number of moons. The largest moon is Ganymede which is a moon of Jupiter.


title: Solar System

text: The formation and evolution of the Solar System began 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud.


title: Solar System

text: Most of the collapsing mass collected in the centre, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk of loose dust, out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and other Solar System bodies formed.


title: Solar System

text: This model, known as the nebular hypothesis, was developed in the 18th (1700s) century by Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, and Pierre-Simon Laplace. It has been adjusted by scientific disciplines such as astronomy, physics, geology, and planetary science. As our knowledge of space has grown, the models have been changed to account for the new observations.


title: Solar System

text: The Solar System has evolved considerably since its initial formation. Many moons have formed from circling discs of gas and dust around their parent planets, while other moons are believed to have formed and were later captured by their planets. Still others, as the Earth's Moon, may be the result of giant collisions.


title: Solar System

text: Many collisions between bodies have occurred, and have been important to the evolution of the Solar System. In the early stages, the positions of the planets sometimes shifted, and planets have switched places. This planetary migration is thought to have been responsible for much of the Solar System's early evolution.


title: Solar System

text: The Earth's orbit around the Sun is nearly a perfect circle, but when mapped it is found that the Earth moves around the Sun in a very slightly oval shaped orbit, called an elliptical orbit. The other planets in the Solar System also orbits the Sun in slightly elliptical orbits. Mercury has a more elliptical orbit than the others, and some of the smaller objects orbit the Sun in very eccentric orbits.


title: Solar System

text: For thousands of years, people had no need for a name for the "Solar System". They thought the Earth stayed still at the center of everything (geocentrism). Although the Greek philosopher Aristarchus of Samos suggested that there was a special order in the sky, Nicolaus Copernicus was the first to develop a mathematical system that described what we now call the "solar system". This was called a new "system of the world". In the 17th century, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton began helping people understand physics more clearly. People began to accept the idea that the Earth is a planet and moves around the Sun, and that the planets are worlds with the same physical laws that control Earth. More recently, telescopes and space probes have led to discoveries of mountains and craters, and seasonal meteorological phenomena such as clouds, dust storms and ice caps on the other planets.


title: Solar System

text: Astronomers are now more or less certain that the order of the planets was not always as it is today. Knowing what we know today, we can see the Solar System is strange. All other planetary system we are able to study have their largest planet close to their star. Also we have noticed other oddities in the Solar System. Mars is smaller than it ought to be, and the asteroid belt has been disturbed.


title: Solar System

text: So, astronomers have put forward the grand tack hypothesis. In it Jupiter was earlier closer to the Sun, and (for some unknown reason) moved out to its present position.


title: Solar System

text: The planets are the biggest objects that go around the Sun. It took people many years of using telescopes to find the objects that were farthest away. New planets might still be found, and more small objects are found every year. Most of the planets have moons that orbit around them just as the planets orbit the Sun. There are at least 173 of these moons in the solar system.


title: Solar System

text: Pluto was discovered by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh and was declared the 9th planet of the solar system in 1930.


title: Solar System

text: This all changed on August 24, 2006, when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided on the correct definition for the word "planet" for the first time. By this definition, Pluto was not a planet anymore due to its irregular orbit and size.


title: Solar System

text: It became a "dwarf planet" along with Eris and many others. Eris was more massive than Pluto. After this, Pluto was put on the list of minor planets and was downgraded in 2006 by astronomer Michael E Brown. Instead they defined a new category of dwarf planet, into which Pluto did fit, along with some others. These small planets are sometimes called plutinos.


title: Solar System

text: There are a few main parts of the Solar System. Here they are in order from the Sun, with the planets numbered, and the dwarf planets marked with the letters a to e.


title: Solar System

text: The first four planets closest to the Sun are called the inner planets. They are small and dense terrestrial planets, with solid surfaces. They are made up of mostly rock and metal with a distinct internal structure and a similar size. Three also have an atmosphere. The study of the four planets gives information about geology outside the Earth. Most asteroids are also often counted with the inner planets


title: Solar System

text: The Oort cloud is separate from the trans-Neptune region, and much farther out. It contains the long-period comets.


title: Solar System

text: The "plane of the ecliptic" is defined by the Earth's orbit around the Sun. All of the planets orbit the Sun roughly around this same orbital plane. The farther away from this plane a planet orbits, the more "inclined" is its orbit to the ecliptic. If you could look at the solar system "edge on" then all the planets would be orbiting more or less in the plane of the ecliptic.


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: The colon (":") is a punctuation mark, simply consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical (up/down) line.


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: A colon is a more significant pause than a semicolon. It is usually used to contrast two parts of a sentence:


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: The colon's first appearance in English text is marked by the "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary" as 1589.


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: A special double-triangle colon symbol is used in IPA to indicate that the preceding sound is long. Its form is that of two triangles, each a bit larger than a point of a standard colon, pointing toward each other. It is available in Unicode as modifier letter triangular colon, Unicode U+02D0 (). A regular colon is often used as a fallback when this character is not available, or in the practical orthography of some languages (particularly in Mexico), which have a phonemic long/short distinction in vowels.


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: The colon is also used in mathematics, cartography, model building and other fields to denote a ratio or a scale, as in 3:1 (pronounced "three to one"). A betting odd of the form formula_1 corresponds to the probability formula_2. Unicode provides a distinct ratio character, Unicode U+2236 () for mathematical usage.


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: In many non-English-speaking countries, the colon is used as a division sign: ""a divided by b"" is written as a : b.


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: In computing, the colon character is represented by ASCII code 58, and is located at Unicode code-point U+003A. The full-width (double-byte) equivalent, ：, is located at Unicode code point U+FF1A.


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: The colon is quite often used as a special control character in many operating systems commands, URLs, computer programming languages, and in the path representation of several file systems. It is often used as a single post-fix delimiter, signifying the immediate precedence of a token keyword or the transition from one mode of character string interpretation to another related mode. Some applications, such as the widely used MediaWiki, use the colon as both a pre-fix and post-fix delimiter.


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: For a double-colon, "::" the meaning has included the use of ellipsis, as spanning over omitted text; however, there have been other meanings as well.


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: On the Internet (online chats, email, message boards, etc.), a colon or multiple colons is sometimes used to denote an action or emote. In this use, it has the inverse function of quotation marks—denoting actions where unmarked text is assumed to be dialog. For example:


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: Colons may also be used for sounds (as with ":Click:"). One can contrast this use with the use of outer asterisks (for example, *cough* would denote that the speaker is coughing, as opposed to saying the word 'cough').


title: Colon (punctuation)

text: It also has the widespread usage of representing two vertically aligned eyes in a emoticon, such as :-), :( :P, :D, :3, etc


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Sexual intercourse (or simply called sex) is the insertion and thrusting of a male's penis into a female's vagina. People and animals that sexually reproduce use sexual intercourse to have an offspring. Sometimes sexual intercourse is called coitus or copulation and is more casually known as having sex or sleeping together. The two animals may be of opposite sexes or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails. Sexual intercourse may also be between individuals of the same sex.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Humans sometimes engage in behaviors that do not include the penetration of sexual organs, such as oral intercourse or anal intercourse or by non-sexual organs (fingering, fisting). These behaviors are sometimes included in the definition of sexual intercourse. Sex is usually teleiophilic (between adults).


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Two animals coming together for the purposes of sexual reproduction is called mating. Most mammals only mate when the female is at the point of estrus, which is the most fertile period of time in its reproductive cycle. In certain animals, sexual intercourse is not only used for reproduction, but has taken other functions as well. These animals include bonobos, dolphins, and chimpanzees which also have sexual intercourse even when the female is not in estrus, and to engage in sex acts with same-sex partners. In most instances, humans have sex primarily for pleasure. This behavior in the above mentioned animals is also presumed to be for pleasure, which in turn strengthens social bonds.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Many governments have laws relating to sex. Forcing someone to have sex who does not want to, called rape, is a serious crime in many countries. There are other forms of sex that may also be against the law, such as incest, sex with minors, sex outside of a marriage, prostitution, homosexual sex, sex with animals, as well as others.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Sexual intercourse is the natural and most common way to make a baby. It involves a man and woman having sex without birth control until the man ejaculates, or releases, semen from his penis into the woman's vagina. The semen, which has sperm in it (which is made in his testicles), moves to the Fallopian tubes, and if it finds an ovum on its way, it will try to fertilize it. If this works, the now fertilized ovum sticks to the side of the uterus and the woman becomes pregnant. The fertilized ovum then develops into a human. Medically, it is called a pregnancy until birth.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Certain species of animals also have sex for other purposes than to bear offspring. These include Humans, bonobos, chimpanzees and dolphins. These species also are among those known to engage in homosexual behaviors.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: In both humans and bonobos, the female has a relatively concealed ovulation. Neither male or female partners commonly know whether she is fertile at any given moment. One reason for this may be that sex partners of these species form strong emotional bonds. The partners come together for more than just sexual intercourse. In the case of humans, long-term partnership is more important than immediate sexual reproduction.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Humans, bonobos and dolphins show cooperative behavior. In many cases, this behavior has shown better results than what an individual can achieve alone. In these animals, the use of sex has evolved beyond reproduction and has taken additional social functions. Sex reinforces intimate social bonds between individuals. Overall, such cooperation also benefits each member of the group in that they are better able to survive.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: In humans, sexual intercourse seems to serve three types of purposes, which do not exclude one another:


title: Sexual intercourse

text: In the late 20th century, very effective forms of contraception (birth control) were developed allowing a man and women to help prevent a baby from being made when they have sex. One type of contraception is a condom. This is a piece of rubber that covers the penis that a man can wear during intercourse, which stops the man's semen from going into the woman's vagina. This does not always work though because the condom may rip or tear. Another well-known type of contraception is called the Pill, which a woman takes every day. When a woman is "on the Pill," she and her partner may have sex any time they wish with very little chance of making a baby. It is recommended that a couple who have a sexual relationship use two forms of contraception. That way if one fails the other is a 'backup'.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Contraception allows people to keep "sex for fun" separate from "sex to make children". For example, a fertile couple may use contraception to experience sexual pleasure (recreational). At the same time, this experience may strengthen their relationship, and a stronger relationship may mean that they will better be able to raise children in the future.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Who people like to have sex with depends on their sexuality. Men who like to have sex with women, and women who like to have sex with men are heterosexual or "". Men who only like to have sex with other men, and women who only like to have sex with other women are homosexual or "gay". A different word to describe a woman who only likes to have sex with other women is "lesbian". Some people like both men and women, which is called being bisexual. Others do not feel sexual attraction at all, and are referred to as asexual.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Some diseases can be caught by having sex. These diseases are called sexually-transmitted infections (STIs).


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Some examples of STIs include chlamydia infection, syphilis and gonorrhea. A virus called HIV causes AIDS, which cannot be cured and can lead to death.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Using Latex condoms or oral dams reduce the chance that a few types of diseases will be passed on, but it not entirely effective for all STIs. Birth control (like "the Pill") can prevent pregnancy, but won't prevent sexual infections.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Some STIs can also be spread in ways other than having sex. For example, herpes simplex and hepatitis B could be caught by a virgin without having sex, but can also be caught through sex. Some types of STIs can spread from contact between the genitals, mouth, anus, skin, eyes, and (rarely) infected surfaces; this depends a lot on the type of STI and how it spreads. Some common diseases like HPV can cause warts and cancer in the genitals or anus or throat.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: There exists an HPV vaccine that prevents some sexually-transmitted strains of HPV; however, the vaccine only works if you get vaccinated before becoming infected. The vaccine is approved of for both men and women, but is often not required in the U.S. due to politics.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Oral sex is when one partner uses the tongue, mouth, or throat to excite the other partner's sex organs.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Slangs for oral sex is common in Western cultures, for example: "going down on", "giving a blowjob", "giving head", or "eating out". The technical term for oral sex is fellatio if performed on a male and cunnilingus if performed on a female. When a man performs fellatio on himself, it is called autofellatio, and autocunnilingus if a woman performs cunnilingus on herself. Few men and women are able to do this.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: People can get sexually transmitted infections from oral sex, such as herpes (which can be passed between the mouth and groin), HIV and even oral cancer.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: Anal sex is when an erect penis or other device made for sexual pleasure is inserted into a sexual partner's anus. Anal sex with a female does not lead to pregnancy by itself, however, semen can leak out of the anus and enter into the vagina, and pregnancy may rarely occur. Anal sex can still pass sexually transmitted diseases from one partner to another. It can also be very unhealthy for the body because the skin around the anus can tear, bleed and get infected with bacteria. For safety and pleasure, partners often use condoms, female condoms and/or lubrication.


title: Sexual intercourse

text: A painful sexual act is a condition of repeated or persistent genital pain before, during, or after sexual intercourse due to physical and/or emotional causes. Doctors call the condition "dyspareunia". It occurs in women and men. The condition affects up to one-fifth of women at some point in their lives.


The United States presidential line of succession is the order in which government officials replace the president of the United States if the president leaves office before an elected successor is inaugurated. If the president dies, resigns or is removed from office, the vice president becomes president for the rest of the term. If the vice president is unable to serve, the Speaker of the House acts as president.


title: United States presidential line of succession

text: The United States Constitution says that the vice president of the United States is the person who will replace the president if the president is not able to continue. It is very important to know who the new president will be if they are not able to serve any longer.


text: The laws about succession (after the vice president) were first created in 1792. The second in line, after the vice president was the leader of the Senate. The next in line was the speaker of the House of Representatives. In 1868, during the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, Benjamin Wade was the leader of the Senate. He almost became president, but Johnson was found not guilty by one vote. Johnson had been the vice president for Abraham Lincoln. He became president after the assassination of Lincoln. Because of Lincoln's assassination, there was no vice president at the time.


text: In 1886, after the death of Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks, Congress passed a law that took out the leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives from the line of succession. The new person behind the vice president in line was Secretary of State, followed by other Cabinet members. The leaders of the Senate and House were restored to the line of succession by the Presidential Succession Act of 1947.


title: Arabic language

text: Arabic (العربية, "al-ʿarabiyyah") is a Semitic language, like Hebrew and Aramaic that first appeared in the mid-ninth century BCE in Northern Arabia and southern Levant. Unlike the latter two, where the former drives from the other, however, Arabic is itself a root language, like Latin. Unlike Latin, it is still widely used and spoken today. Around 292 million people speak it as their first language. Many more people can also understand it as a second language. The Arabic language is written from right to left in a consonant alphabet, which is also called an abjad. Since it is so widely spoken throughout the world, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. The other official languages of the UN are: English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese.


title: Arabic language

text: Many countries speak Arabic as an official language, but not all of them speak it the same way. The language has many dialects, or varieties, such as Modern Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic, Maghrebi Arabic , Levantine Arabic and many others. Some of the dialects are spoken so differently from one another that some speakers have a hard time understanding the other. Many dialectic words however are nonetheless still rooted in the original, or classical language.


title: Arabic language

text: Most of the countries that use Arabic as their official language are in the Middle East. They are part of the Arab World, the largest religion in the region is Islam.


title: Arabic language

text: Arabic is very important in Islam because Muslims believe that Allah (God) used it to talk to Muhammad through the Archangel Gabriel (Jibril), giving him the Quran in the language. Many but not all Arabic-speakers are Muslims. The miracle of the Quran is believed to be in its language.