5. Do you know that

the territory of the USA is 9,372,614 square km

the population is about 265 mln people

an average family in the USA consists of 3.2 people

average life duration is 72 years for men and 79 years for women

about 78% of US population are the white, 12% - the black, 7% of Latin American origin, 1% - American Indians and Eskimos

about 32% of US population are Protestants, 23% - Roman catholics, 5% - representatives of other religious denominations

average family income in the USA is about 31 thousand dollars

two major national parties are Republican (its symbol is elephant) and Democratic (its symbol is donkey)

the national flag is called Stars and Stripes

the largest state is Alaska

the “youngest” state is Hawaii

the smallest state is Rhode Island

the longest river is the Mississippi

the highest point is Mount McKinley in Alaska

the lowest point is Death Valley in California

6. Design a tourist brochure featuring some major cities of the United States. Use the information given below. Present your brochures to your group-mates in class.

Washington D.C.

The idea of a national capital city seems to have originated at a meeting of the Congress in June 1783 in the Old City Hall in Philadelphia.

Several locations were considered over the next six years, but Northern and Southern disagreements prevented decision until 1790.Although the decision to locate the capital on the Potomac was largely a political compromise, selection of the exact site for the city was left to the newly elected president, George Washington. The chosen district, or territory as it was first called, was 10 miles square.

Washington negotiated with Pierre-Charles L'Enfant to lay out a plan for the new city. A volunteer in the Revolution whose democratic idealism was unquestioned, a well-trained engineer, and an artist who had designed the setting for the President's inaugural ceremonies in New York City, L'Enfant was highly respected and admired. Apparently sensing the historic significance of his appointment, he conceived his plan on a grand scale.The Capitol's cornerstone was laid by Washington in September 1793, and construction was begun on the White House, designed by an Irishman, James Hoban.

Before the Civil War Washington grew very slowly and for a long time was more like a provincial town.After 1865, however, business and commerce started developing on a larger scale and the population increased rapidly. Streets were improved, trees planted, government buildings and monuments built. Within the second half of the 19^th and the first half of the 20^th century Washington D.C. acquired its present-day grandeur.

Only two major economic activities provide virtually all of the income to the city and its residents. The federal civil service is by far the largest single employer in the metropolitan area. Tourism is second in economic importance. Manufacturing and other commercial activities occupy only a minor place in the economic structure.

Being the seat of the national government and the site of many of the nation's most significant monuments, Washington attracts millions of tourists each year.

Washington is one of the few capital cities of the world founded expressly as a seat of government and as a centre for international representation. The expansive designs for the city were to symbolize the ideals of the freedom so dear to the nation.

The modern city holds the nation's most sacred monuments and the most meaningful artifacts of its history, the embassies of foreign nations, and an impressive collection of the national art treasures. Nearly every significant national organization has its headquarters or a major branch in the District.

Washington skyline is dominated by the Capitol, the meeting place of the U.S. Congress and one of the nation's most familiar landmarks. It is situated on Capitol Hill. To its west lies the Mall, and to its east the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. Various Congressional (House and Senate) office buildings adjoin it to the north and south. The building also served as the meeting place of the Supreme Court until its own building was completed (in 1935). The building contains about 540 rooms and stands in a 131-acre (53-hectare) park.

The Library of Congress is probably the largest national library, and its collection of modern books is particularly extensive. It was founded in 1800 but lost many books by fire during a bombardment of the Capitol by British troops in 1814. These losses were to some extent compensated for by the purchase of Thomas Jefferson's library. The library remained a strictly congressional library for many years, but, as the collections were notably enlarged, the library became and remains--in effect, although not in law--the national library of the United States. The public has access to many of the collections.

The other major official building in Washington D.C. is the charming, essentially modest White House, which has been judged by many as among the finest and most appropriate residences of state in the world.

The White House is the official residence of the president of the United States. The White House and its landscaped grounds occupy 18 acres (7.2 hectares) of ground. The main building has been the home of every U.S. president since John Adams and is the oldest federal building in the capital.In 1791 a public competition was held to choose the most suitable design for a presidential residence. Thomas Jefferson and others submitted drawings, but the Irish-American architect James Hoban of Philadelphia won the commission (and a $500 prize) with his plan for a Georgian mansion in the Palladian style. This structure was to have three floors and more than 100 rooms, and would be built in pale grey sandstone. The cornerstone was laid on Oct. 13, 1792, and President John Adams and his wife, Abigail, became the newly completed mansion's first occupants in 1800. By 1809 it was already called the "White House" because its white-grey sandstone contrasted strikingly with the red brick of nearby buildings. (President Theodore Roosevelt adopted "White House" as the building's official name in 1902.) The White House was burned during the British invasion of 1814, but it was rebuilt and enlarged afterwards.

During the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, the mansion's second-floor rooms were converted from presidential offices to living quarters for his family, and the West Wing was constructed to provide greater office space for the president and his growing staff. More office space was made available with the building of the East Wing in 1942.

The last major alterations to the White House were made in the 1960s by Jacqueline Kennedy, who collected items of historic and artistic value with which to decorate its rooms.The White House building complex has a total of more than 130 rooms. The main building still contains the presidential family's living quarters and various reception rooms, all decorated in styles of the 18th and 19th centuries. Parts of the main building are open to guided tours. The north portico is the public entrance to the main building, while the south portico is a private entrance reserved for the presidential family. The west terrace contains a swimming pool and gym, while the east terrace contains a movie theatre. The West Wing contains the presidential office (the Oval Office), the Cabinet room, and the press rooms, while the East Wing contains other offices.Over the years the White House has become a major American shrine, and its public areas are toured by about 1,500,000 people every year.

One of the imposing biuldings on the Mall is the central building of the Smithsonian Institution, a red-stone building with numerous turrets and battlements in medieval style.This is a research institution founded by the bequest of the English scientist James Smithson. The mission of the Smithsonian Institution is the “increase and diffusion of knowledge among men”. Today it is a huge research and museum complex which includes a library, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American Art, the National Museum of History and Technology, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Zoological Park, the Science Information Exchange, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, etc.

Ever since L'Enfant urged that Washington be lavishly equipped with "statues, columns or other ornaments" to honour the nation's greatness, a continuous effort has been made to assure that no open space in the city lacks its representative monument. Within the District of Columbia alone, more than 300 memorials and statues of varying size, purpose, and aesthetic merit have been raised--from the elegant and inspiring Lincoln and Jefferson memorials and the pure grandeur of the Washington Monument, to the statues of major and minor Civil War heroes, to memorial benches, Doric temples, and Japanese pagodas.

The Washington Monument is a memorial to George Washington, the first American president. The monument was built at intervals between 1848 and 1884 from public subscriptions and federal appropriations and was dedicated in 1885. The structure, based on a design by Robert Mills, is a granite obelisk faced with Maryland marble. It is 55 feet (16.8 m) square at the base, 555 feet 5 inches (169.3 m) high, and weighs about 91,000 tons.

The monument was the tallest man-made structure in the world from its completion in 1884 until surpassed by the newly built Eiffel Tower in 1889. It is still the world's tallest masonry structure. The top of the monument can be reached by an interior iron stairway comprising 50 landings and 898 steps; an elevator makes the ascent in about 70 seconds.

Lincoln Memorial was designed to honour President Abraham Lincoln and "the virtues of tolerance, honesty, and constancy in the human spirit." Built in the style of the Parthenon in Athens, the structure includes 36 columns of Colorado marble surrounding the building, one for each state that comprised the Union in Lincoln's time. The colossal (19-ft) seated statue of Lincoln dominates the interior and looks eastward across a reflecting pool at the Washington Monument and Capitol. On the South Wall is inscribed Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and on the North Wall his Second Inaugural Address. Above are two paintings by Jules Guerin representing "Reunion and Progress" and the "Emancipation of a Race." The cornerstone was laid in 1915 and the completed Memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day, May 30, 1922.

Jefferson Memorial, a monument to the U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, is situated in East Potomac Park. It was authorized in 1934 and dedicated on April 13, 1943, the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth. The circular-colonnaded structure was built in the classical style that Jefferson preferred. The pediment over the portico depicts Jefferson reading his draft of the Declaration of Independence. In the centre of the domed, marble-lined interior is a heroic bronze figure of Jefferson sculpted by Rudulph Evans; inscriptions of Jefferson's writings appear on the four interior panels.The memorial appears in its most picturesque setting in early spring when the Oriental cherry trees are in bloom.

With the increasing number of monuments of all sorts, a growing concern that Washington would soon become a quarry of stone and metal monuments dedicated to minor individuals and causes led to a movement toward "living" or "functional" memorials that attempt to translate the personality of the person being honoured. Within this context, the monument dedicated to President John F. Kennedy was designed as a cultural centre for the performing arts. John F.Kennedy Centre for the performing arts was opened in 1971 and houses three theatres for concerts, drama and opera.

Another point of general attraction in Washington D.C. is the Arlington National Cemetery. The first soldier buried there (May 13, 1864) was a Confederate prisoner who died in a local hospital. Some of the dead from every war in which the U.S. has participated, including a few officers of the American Revolution, have since been buried there. Many of the nation's military leaders and other outstanding individuals, including Pierre-Charles L'Enfant, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy, are buried there.The cemetery is the site of the Tomb of the Unknowns, also called the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, first established as a memorial to the dead of World War I but now considered a memorial to the dead of other wars as well.

Pentagon, a large five-sided building in Arlington county, near Washington, D.C., serves as headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, including all three services--Army, Navy, and Air Force. Designed by George Edwin Bergstrom, it was built in 1941-43 to bring under one roof the U.S. War Department offices then housed in widely scattered buildings. On its completion it was the world's largest office building, covering 34 acres (14 hectares) and offering 3,700,000 square feet (343,730 square m) of usable floor space for as many as 25,000 persons, military and civilian. The structure has five floors, excluding the mezzanine and the basement. The building consists of five concentric pentagons, or "rings," with 10 spokelike corridors connecting the whole. Parking areas adjacent to the building can accommodate as many as 10,000 cars, and a heliport for the Pentagon was added in 1956.

The original L'Enfant plan set aside 17 areas for parks, including the Mall, the Washington Monument grounds, the Capitol Hill grounds, the White House grounds (including the present Lafayette Square), and the small plots of grass at the intersections of the major avenues. The preservation of these areas and the addition of others provides Washington with the several hundred parks and green spaces .

The traditional Cherry Blossom Festival held early each spring is the oldest of Washington's celebrations. In spite of their attraction for tourists, the festival parade and crowning of a queen tend to be less important for Washingtonians than is the explosion of blossoms around the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial that the festival marks.

Also popular is Washington's annual festival of American folk arts and crafts, held for a week each summer on the Mall. This open-air display of the arts and crafts of many regional and ethnic subcultures has become an increasingly significant cultural event.

New York

New York is the country's largest city and port located at the mouth of the Hudson River.The city occupies Manhattan and Staten islands, the western end of Long Island, a portion of the mainland, and various islands in New York Harbor and Long Island Sound.

New York's recorded history begins with an Italian navigator, Giovanni da Verrezano, who around 1524 sailed into the present New York bay. In 1609 Captain Henry Hudson explored the harbour and the river, later named after him. In 1624 Dutch colonists arrived and established their permanent settlement, named New Amsterdam. The following year the Dutch West Indian Company bought the whole island of Manhattan from Indians for a few trinkets. In 1663 the colony was captured by the British fleet under Duke of York and renamed New York, but the Dutch and those who came with them stayed, so from the very first days of its existence New York was truly an international city.

Depending on one's point of view, New York City is any one of four cities: to social scientists it is a laboratory in which to study the challenges of urban life, from ghastly slum to tycoon luxury; to tourists it is a city of jostling crowds, traffic jams, dirty streets, smelly subways--all in dramatic contast to such international symbols as the skyscraper skyline, the United Nations buildings, Wall Street, the Statue of Liberty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Times Square, and Broadway theatres; to commuters it is an enervating beehive of world trade and finance, mass media, business administration, fashion, and assorted entrepreneurial activities and manufacture--a place to leave as soon as possible in the evening for the calmer suburbian atmosphere.But to the residents of this temperate, humid city, New York is in reality a collection of many neighbourhoods scattered among the city's five boroughs--Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island (formerly called Richmond)--each exhibiting its own life-style. To move from one neighbourhood to another in the city's 304 square miles (787 square kilometres) may be like passing from one country to another. One can often hear that "New York is not the United States" or "It's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there".

Much of the style and tone of life in the United States is set in New York City, which remains the artistic, cultural, and economic capital of the nation.

The heart of the nation's live theatre is found on and off Broadway; many television programs originate in New York City, where several broadcast and cable networks have their home offices, and many motion pictures are filmed on its streets. The city's museums--particularly the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the American Museum of Natural History--set a standard for similar institutions across the country.Several major publishing houses have their headquarters in New York City, as do a large number of national magazines. The central offices of many of the country's largest corporations are located there, supporting a great many banks, public-relations firms, advertising agencies, management consultants, and law firms. Because of this concentration of business and culture, New York City maintains a leading national position in American life.

The heart of the New York City is Manhattan. It is here that the major museums, theatres and businesses are situated. Except for Greenwich Village, most of Manhattan is laid down in rectangles. Its Avenues run north and south and are numbered from First Avenue on the east to Twelfth Avenue on the west. The Streets run east and west and are also numbered. Broadway is the longest street running across the island from west (in the north) to east (in the south). Where Broadway crosses an avenue, a square or circle is formed: Columbus Circle at Eighth Ave. and 59^th St., Times Square at Seventh Ave. and 42 St.

Lower Manhattan is the oldest part of the city. Most streets are named here. Greenwich Village, Soho, Chinatown and the well-known Wall Street are situated here.Wall Street is only a quarter of a mile long. Principal offices of most of the city’s largest banks and the largest insurance companies are located here, as well as the New York Stock Exchange.

New York is famous for its skyscrapers. The Manhattan skyline can leave no one indifferent. The Empire State Building held the world’s record for tallness untill the 1970s. Then the twin towers of the World Trade Center pushed it down.

New York is a great scientific and educational centre. Among its numerous colleges and universities are such giants as the State University of New York, the City University of New York, New York University, Columbia University and others.

Chicago

Chicago is the second largest city in the USA. Located on the southwestern tip of Lake Michigan, Chicago became the main transshipment centre for the grain and livestock of the Midwest in the 19th century. In the 20th century it remained the leading transportation, commercial, and industrial centre of the north-central United States.

Since the Prohibition era of the 1920s and early 1930s Chicago has had the reputation of a “criminal city” associated with gangsterism, corruption, the names of Al Capone, John Dillinger, and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in the early 20th century.

Chicago arose from the ashes of its Great Fire in 1871 to develop the skyscraper as well as many of the other major innovations of modern architecture.

In the decades immediately following World War II, landmarks of Chicago's past were often sacrificed to to the needs of developing business.There were exceptions--notably, the Auditorium Building and the Newberry Library--but these were preserved through limited, private initiative. More recently, public awareness and effective legislation have fostered increased conservation efforts. This factor and the desire for more land on which to build new structures have aided in the southward and westward expansion of Chicago's downtown into formerly neglected areas, so that the city's striking skyline, containing some of the world's tallest buildings, rises along a continually widening strip.

Behind this impressive facade lies a sprawling industrial city, its monotony accentuated by the flat Midwestern landscape and by a dull pattern of streets broken only by the radial avenues that cover old Indian trails to the northwest and southwest and the great freeways and railroad lines that for many years have made the city a major hub of commerce. The whole mass reaches out over the former prairie, spilling over city limits into an irregular and continuously expanding belt of suburbs and industrial satellites.

The magnificent downtown lakeside strip nevertheless remains the focus of attention in the mind of resident, commuter, and visitor alike. A person strolling north on Michigan Avenue (in the downtown area) passes the green acres of Grant Park, with the neoclassical building of the Art Institute of Chicago and the well-hidden tracks of the former Illinois Central Gulf Railroad (now Metropolitan Rail); the Cultural Center of Chicago, with arched rooms and hallways decorated with fine mosaic work of a past era; and one of the world's greatest skyscraper complexes.

From the bridge that spans the Chicago River the stroller is confronted with what many people regard as one of the most beautiful and open urban spaces in the world, stretching along both sides of what once was the river's estuary. North of the river along Michigan Avenue is "the Magnificent Mile"--Chicago's answer to New York City's Fifth Avenue in commercial elegance--which includes the Old Water Tower, whose medieval-style stone turrets survived the conflagration of 1871 .

Outside these areas of downtown Chicago, the stroller finds a complex city, a kaleidoscope of neighbourhoods mirroring the ethnic and racial diversity of U.S. life. Chicago remains essentially the "blue-collar" city characterized by the poet Carl Sandburg as the "city of big shoulders," heavily populated by the descendants of labourers from the streets and soils of 19th-century Europe and of former slaves from the Deep South. The latest influx--that of Spanish-speaking residents and of immigrants from Southeast Asia and eastern Europe--has added further to the complexity.

Chicago has the reputation as a major theatre centre, and its contemporary styles of architecture are imaginative and sometimes controversial. The willingness to try something new--illustrated by a huge abstract Picasso sculpture, a gift to the city from the artist himself--continues to entertain Chicagoans and the city's millions of tourists.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles city is situated in southern California. It is a semitropical metropolis of palm trees and swimming pools, television studios and aerospace factories. The city sprawls across the territory of 1,202 square kilometres. Its hallmark is an architecturally dramatic network of freeways. The automobile dominates life in this uniquely mobile community.

Los Angeles County contains more than 80 other incorporated cities, including Beverly Hills, Pasadena, and Long Beach.

The metropolitan area has paid for its spectacular growth by acquiring such present-day urban attributes as smog-filled skies, polluted harbours, clogged freeways, crowded classrooms, explosive ghettos, and annual budgets on the brink of bankruptcy.

Nevertheless Los Angeles attracts millions of people from all over the world. Probably the most famous street in the city is Sunset Boulevard. Here you can see every side of the city's character – cheap nightclubs side by side with smart stores and expensive restaurants. At the western end of the Boulevard is the Beverly Hills Hotel, where visiting film stars, directors and writers go to sign their contracts.

In the exclusive suburbs of Beverly Hills and Belair one can see magnificent houses built in every possible style and surrounded by green lawns, swimming pools and high security fences. The streets here are spotlessly clean and there are Rolls Royces everywhere you look.

Tourists can take a guided tour round Universal Studios in Hollywood or spend a lazy afternoon at Malibu Lagoon where many of Hollywood's younger film stars and directors come to relax. Malibu is also an excellent beach for surfing, and champion surfers come here from all over the world.

Disneyland is a place for children of all ages. At Disneyland you can go on a boat journey through a tropical jungle; you can take a train through the American Wild West; travel in a spaceship or plunge into a pool at Splash Mountain.

About 50 miles from Los Angeles city is Santa Barbara, a beautiful resort on the Pacific coast.