History of the USA. (0)

The United States of America.
History.
For thousands of years America was unknown to Europe . There lived only the native people, who had come from Siberia many thousand years ago by a land bridge . They had spread over the country , varying enormously from nomadic food gatherers to fishing societies. Then the Vikings visited Canada around AD 1000, but they did not stay . In 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered America while trying to reach India. He named the native people Indians, because he though he had reached India. He didn’t stay either and in the sixteenth century the first Europeans to settle in America were the Spanish , the English and the French .
The first village founded by the English settlers was in Virginia in 1607. It was called Jamestown. They didn’t have good relations with the Indians and many of them died. But Pocahontas , the daughter of an Indian chief , became their friend and helped them. They started growing tobacco in Virginia , using African slaves in the fields.
In 1620 a new group of British settlers reached Plymouth, Massachusetts, with a ship called Mayflower and they were called ’ Pilgrim Fathers ’ due to their strong belief in religion . They left England because they didn’t agree with the Church of England. They became farmers and businessmen who thought that all men were equal and they didn’t have slaves. Many of the Pilgrims died in the first year in America, but they were helped by the Indians, who showed them how to grow corn . In the autumn of 1621, the Pilgrims had a big dinner to thank the Indians who had helped them to survive the hard winter . That day is now known as Thanksgiving and is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in America.
More and more people arrived . Over a time settlers from many other countries joined the English in America – the French, the Spaniards and the Dutch . Africans were first brought to Virginia in 1619.
By 1770 there were thirteen British colonies in America who weren’t pleased with their lives because they had to pay high taxes. In 1773, the ’ Boston Tea Party ’ took place and it made the British mad, so in 1775 the War of Independence started. The Americans were led by George Washington who in 1788 became the country’s first president . On the 4th of July , 1776 the Declaration of Independence was written and that day is now celebrated as the Day of Independence. The war ended in 1788 and during the time following it, the Americans bought large pieces of land from foreign countries to themselves, creating a big country.
By 1860 America was a big country but there was a big difference between the free North and the slavery South . The biggest problem was the issue of slaves and due to that the Civil War broke out in 1861. President Abraham Lincoln tried hard to unite the country again . Though both sides were strong, the North had more men, more factories and stronger leaders. In 1865 the South accepted the loss. Lincoln was shot in 1865 and the next president wasn’t strong enough to unite the country, so problems weren’t solved.
At the beginning of the 19th century many settlers came to America, in search for a better life. By the middle of the 19th century there were already 34 states in the USA.
The United States grew to be one of the great powers of the world. The nation fought in the First World War. After the war women got the right to vote for the first time.
In 1929 the Great Depression began with the stock market crash. Banks, factories and farms shut down and many Americans were unemployed .
Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won the presidential election in 1932, promised a New Deal. Over the next two years, millions of unemployed were given jobs and numerous measures were also taken to help the farmers.
In 1941 the United States entered the Second World War when Japan attacked the Hawaiian Islands . The war ended in 1945 when the USA dropped the atomic bombs on two Japanese cities and made Japan to surrender.
Today about 30 million of 260 million Americans are black . When they were freed after the Civil War, the Southerners were angry at them and showed a lot of prejudice . Until in 1870 the blacks didn’t have civil rights or the right to vote. In the 20th century many blacks travelled to the North but even there they were treated differently. In the 1950s a black churchman by the name Martin Luther King started to fight for black people and said that they were equal to white people. After 1963 when he held his famous speech “I have a dream ...“, in 1964 the blacks were given same rights as the white. In 1968 King was murdered.
The 1950s are known as the time of Cold War because of the competition with the Soviet Union. After that in the 1960s and 1970s the Americans fought in the Korean and in the Vietnam War, and in the1990s in the Gulf War.