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Britain's American colonies broke with the mother country in 1776 and were recognized as the new nation of the United States of America following the Treaty of Paris in 1783. During the 19th and 20th centuries, 37 new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the North American continent and acquired a number of overseas possessions. The two most traumatic experiences in the nation's history were the Civil War (1861-65), in which a northern Union of states defeated a secessionist Confederacy of 11 southern slave states, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, an economic downturn during which about a quarter of the labor force lost its jobs. Buoyed by victories in World Wars I and II and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the US remains the world's most powerful nation state. Over a span of more than five decades, the economy has achieved steady growth, low unemployment and inflation, and rapid advances in technology.

The US has the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world, with a per capita GDP of $46,400. In this market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and the federal and state governments buy needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. US business firms enjoy greater flexibility than their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan in decisions to expand capital plant, to lay off surplus workers, and to develop new products. At the same time, they face higher barriers to enter their rivals' home markets than foreign firms face entering US markets. US firms are at or near the forefront in technological advances, especially in computers and in medical, aerospace, and military equipment; their advantage has narrowed since the end of World War II. The onrush of technology largely explains the gradual development of a "two-tier labor market" in which those at the bottom lack the education and the professional/technical skills of those at the top and, more and more, fail to get comparable pay raises, health insurance coverage, and other benefits. Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. The war in March-April 2003 between a US-led coalition and Iraq, and the subsequent occupation of Iraq, required major shifts in national resources to the military. Soaring oil prices between 2005 and the first half of 2008 threatened inflation and unemployment, as higher gasoline prices ate into consumers' budgets. Imported oil accounts for about two-thirds of US consumption. Long-term problems include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable trade and budget deficits, and stagnation of family income in the lower economic groups. The merchandise trade deficit reached a record $840 billion in 2008 before shrinking to $450 billion in 2009. The global economic downturn, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, investment bank failures, falling home prices, and tight credit pushed the United States into a recession by mid-2008. GDP contracted until the third quarter of 2009, making this the deepest and longest downturn since the Great Depression. To help stabilize financial markets, the US Congress established a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in October 2008. The government used some of these funds to purchase equity in US banks and other industrial corporations. In January 2009 the US Congress passed and President Barack OBAMA signed a bill providing an additional $787 billion fiscal stimulus to be used over 10 years - two-thirds on additional spending and one-third on tax cuts - to create jobs and to help the economy recover. Approximately two-thirds of these funds will have been injected into the economy by the end of 2010. In March 2010, President OBAMA signed a health insurance reform bill into law that will extend coverage to an additional 32 million American citizens by 2016, through private health insurance for the general population and Medicaid for the impoverished.

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Caribbean and Pacific.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with over 309 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest both by land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2009 GDP of $14.3 trillion (a quarter of nominal global GDP and a fifth of global GDP at purchasing power parity).

Indigenous peoples of Asian origin have inhabited what is now the mainland United States for many thousands of years. This Native American population was greatly reduced by disease and warfare after European contact. The United States was founded by thirteen British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed their right to self-determination and their establishment of a cooperative union. The rebellious states defeated the British Empire in the American Revolution, the first successful colonial war of independence. The current United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a strong central government. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratified in 1791.

In the 19th century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. By the 1870s, the national economy was the world's largest. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a military power. It emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower. The country accounts for two-fifths of global military spending and is a leading economic, political, and cultural force in the world.

It comprises 48 conterminous states occupying the mid-continent, Alaska at the northwestern extreme of North America, and the island state of Hawaii in the mid-Pacific Ocean. Area, including the U.S. share of the Great Lakes: 3,676,486 sq mi (9,522,055 sq km). Population (2009 est.): 307,226,000. Capital: Washington, D.C. The population includes people of European and Middle Eastern ancestry, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians (Native Americans), and Alaska Natives. Languages: English (predominant), Spanish. Religions: Christianity (Protestant, Roman Catholic, other Christians, Eastern Orthodox); also Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism. Currency: U.S. dollar. The country encompasses mountains, plains, lowlands, and deserts. Mountain ranges include the Appalachians, Ozarks, Rockies, Cascades, and Sierra Nevada. The lowest point is Death Valley, Calif. The highest point is Alaska’s Mount McKinley; within the conterminous states it is Mount Whitney, Calif. Chief rivers are the Mississippi system, the Colorado, the Columbia, and the Rio Grande. The Great Lakes, the Great Salt Lake, Iliamna Lake, and Lake Okeechobee are the largest lakes. The U.S. is among the world’s leading producers of several minerals, including copper, silver, zinc, gold, coal, petroleum, and natural gas; it is the chief exporter of food. Its manufactures include iron and steel, chemicals, electronic equipment, and textiles. Other important industries are tourism, dairying, livestock raising, fishing, and lumbering. The U.S. is a federal republic with two legislative houses; its head of state and government is the president.

The territory was originally inhabited for several thousand years by numerous American Indian peoples who had probably migrated from Asia. European exploration and settlement from the 16th century began displacement of the Indians. The first permanent European settlement, by the Spanish, was at Saint Augustine, Fla., in 1565. The English settled Jamestown, Va. (1607); Plymouth, Mass. (1620); Maryland (1634); and Pennsylvania (1681). The English took New York, New Jersey, and Delaware from the Dutch in 1664, a year after English noblemen had begun to colonize the Carolinas. The British defeat of the French in 1763 (see French and Indian War) assured Britain political control over its 13 colonies. Political unrest caused by British colonial policy culminated in the American Revolution (1775–83) and the Declaration of Independence (1776). The U.S. was first organized under the Articles of Confederation (1781), then finally under the Constitution (1787) as a federal republic. Boundaries extended west to the Mississippi River, excluding Spanish Florida. Land acquired from France by the Louisiana Purchase (1803) nearly doubled the country’s territory. The U.S. fought the War of 1812 against the British and acquired Florida from Spain in 1819. In 1830 it legalized the removal of American Indians to lands west of the Mississippi River. Settlement expanded into the Far West in the mid-19th century, especially after the discovery of gold in California in 1848 (see gold rush). Victory in the Mexican War (1846–48) brought the territory of seven more future states (including California and Texas) into U.S. hands. The northwestern boundary was established by treaty with Britain in 1846. The U.S. acquired southern Arizona by the Gadsden Purchase (1853). It suffered disunity during the conflict between the slavery-based plantation economy in the South and the industrial and agricultural economy in the North, culminating in the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery under the 13th Amendment. After Reconstruction (1865–77) the U.S. experienced rapid growth, urbanization, industrial development, and European immigration. In 1887 it authorized allotment of American Indian reservation land to individual tribesmen, resulting in widespread loss of land to whites. Victory in the Spanish-American War brought the U.S. the overseas territories of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. By the end of the 19th century, it had further developed foreign trade and acquired other outlying territories, including Alaska, Midway Island, the Hawaiian Islands, Wake Island, American Samoa, and the Panama Canal Zone.

The U.S. participated in World War I in 1917–18. It granted suffrage to women in 1920 and citizenship to American Indians in 1924. The stock market crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression, which New Deal legislation combated by increasing the federal government’s role in the economy. The U.S. entered World War II after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941). The explosion by the U.S. of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima (Aug. 6, 1945) and another on Nagasaki (Aug. 9, 1945), Japan, brought about Japan’s surrender. Thereafter the U.S. was the military and economic leader of the Western world. In the first decade after the war, it aided the reconstruction of Europe and Japan and became embroiled in a rivalry with the Soviet Union known as the Cold War. It participated in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. In 1952 it granted autonomous commonwealth status to Puerto Rico. Racial segregation in schools was declared unconstitutional in 1954. Alaska and Hawaii were made states in 1959. In 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and authorized U.S. entry into the Vietnam War. The mid- to late 1960s were marked by widespread civil disorder, including race riots and antiwar demonstrations. The U.S. accomplished the first manned lunar landing in 1969. All U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam in 1973. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. assumed the status of sole world superpower. The U.S. led a coalition of forces against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War (1990–91). Administration of the Panama Canal was turned over to Panama in 1999. After the September 11 attacks on the U.S. in 2001 destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, the U.S. attacked Afghanistan’s Taliban government for harbouring and refusing to extradite the mastermind of the terrorism, Osama bin Laden. In 2003 the U.S. attacked Iraq, with British support, and overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein.

Besides the 48 contiguous states that occupy the middle latitudes of the continent, the United States includes the state of Alaska, at the northwestern extreme of North America, and the island state of Hawaii, in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The coterminous states are bounded on the north by Canada, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. The United States is the fourth largest country in the world in area (after Russia, Canada, and China). The national capital is Washington, which is coextensive with the District of Columbia, the federal capital region created in 1790.

The major characteristic of the United States is probably its great variety. Its physical environment ranges from the Arctic to the subtropical, from the moist rain forest to the arid desert, from the rugged mountain peak to the flat prairie. Although the total population of the United States is large by world standards, its overall population density is relatively low; the country embraces some of the world’s largest urban concentrations as well as some of the most extensive areas that are almost devoid of habitation.

The United States contains a highly diverse population; but, unlike a country such as China that largely incorporated indigenous peoples, its diversity has to a great degree come from an immense and sustained global immigration. Probably no other country has a wider range of racial, ethnic, and cultural types than does the United States. In addition to the presence of surviving native Americans (including American Indians, Aleuts, and Eskimo) and the descendants of Africans taken as slaves to America, the national character has been enriched, tested, and constantly redefined by the tens of millions of immigrants who by and large have gone to America hoping for greater social, political, and economic opportunities than they had in the places they left.

The United States is the world’s greatest economic power, measured in terms of gross national product (GNP). The nation’s wealth is partly a reflection of its rich natural resources and its enormous agricultural output, but it owes more to the country’s highly developed industry. Despite its relative economic self-sufficiency in many areas, the United States is the most important single factor in world trade by virtue of the sheer size of its economy. Its exports and imports represent major proportions of the world total. The United States also impinges on the global economy as a source of and as a destination for investment capital. The country continues to sustain an economic life that is more diversified than any other on Earth, providing the majority of its people with one of the world’s highest standards of living.

The United States is relatively young by world standards, being barely more than 200 years old; it achieved its current size only in the mid-20th century. America was the first of the European colonies to separate successfully from its motherland, and it was the first nation to be established on the premise that sovereignty rests with its citizens and not with the government. In its first century and a half, the country was mainly preoccupied with its own territorial expansion and economic growth and with social debates that ultimately led to civil war and a healing period that is still not complete. In the 20th century the United States emerged as a world power, and since World War II it has been one of the preeminent powers. It has not accepted this mantle easily nor always carried it willingly; the principles and ideals of its founders have been tested by the pressures and exigencies of its dominant status. Although the United States still offers its residents opportunities for unparalleled personal advancement and wealth, the depletion of its resources, contamination of its environment, and continuing social and economic inequality that perpetuates areas of poverty and blight all threaten the fabric of the country.

How to find Cheap Last Minute Discount Vacation Holiday Deals

There are 2 types of cheap last minute discount holiday vacations available at this site. Cheap Last Minute Family Vacation Rentals for the entire week that are shown below and Last Minute Weekend Holidays Vacation Hotel Deals and Getaway Breaks (for short weekend trips over two to three days instead of the entire week). Both are shown in the navigation bar at the top of each page and in the left margin.
If you are looking for a specific activity ie. Beach, Ski, Golf, Casino, Spa, All Inclusive etc, use the Last Minute Vacations by Activity link above or in the left margin. If you are looking for the cheapest vacations anywhere, please follow this link: Cheapest Last Minute Vacation Deals under $549/week. If you are looking for a specific City/State in the US, for either cheap weekly timeshare condo rentals or cheap last minute hotel deals and weekend getaway breaks, please follow this link: Last Minute Vacation Rental and Hotel Deals. Additional choices will be available on these pages for weekend getaways , specific cities and activities. International destinations are shown in the left hand margin.

Our Cheap Last Minute Family Vacation Rental Deals and Beach Vacation Rentals are the Ultimate Vacation Value

These Cheap Sell Off Vacations are priced per unit per week based on size of unit and maximum occupancy. Weekly cleaning costs are included in the price of the vacation rental.
Taxes and any All Inclusive Plan (if applicable) are the only extra charges that you may have to pay related to your vacation accommodations.

• There are NO Weekly cleaning costs or other hidden costs
• There are NO booking, registration or other hidden fees
• There are NO vacation weeks to buy in advance so there are no upfront costs
• There is NO vacation club to join so there are no initial or ongoing membership fees
• There is NO timeshare to buy before you can participate in these vacation deals
• There is NO condo upkeep or maintenance fee associated with owning a condo, timeshare or vacation property
• There is NO presentation to attend in order to get a great vacation deal
• There are NO high pressure sales people trying to sell you anything
• We are NOT affiliated with any organization whose purpose is to solicit sales of timeshare interests

NOTE: Prices do NOT include local taxes or the cost of an All Inclusive Plan (if applicable). If you are reserving a property or location that is required to pay tax or has a mandatory All Inclusive plan, then you will be required to pay these directly to the resort upon check-in. These are the only extra charges that you may have to pay.

Condos versus Hotels

Would you rather stay in a confined hotel room with no kitchen facilities or extras when you can get so much more for your money and stay in a spacious 1 or 2 bedroom resort condo with suite-style amenities and a partial or full kitchen?

A partial or full kitchen allows you to stay in for some meals when it is not convenient for you to go out. Breakfast is a perfect example. In a hotel your only option is room service at exorbitant prices. With a spacious resort condo you can have breakfast in bed every day.

The regular price (up to $3,000/week) for all Last Minute Vacations is discounted 6 to 8 weeks in advance to as low as $399 to $549 per week. The prices shown for these Sell Off Vacations are for the room for a week and not per person. Normal cleaning charges upon departure are included in all last minute vacations. NOTE: Prices do NOT include local taxes or all-inclusive fees for food etc. as these are paid directly to the resort. This is the only additionnal charge for our Last Minute Vacations.

Vacation Rental fee does not include taxes or a mandatory or optional all-inclusive fee for meals, drinks etc. Where the resort charges an all-inclusive fee, this fee is extra (from $50 and up per person per day) and is required to be paid directly to the resort at check-in. Fees, terms and conditions of packages covered by an all-inclusive fee are determined solely by the resort, and are subject to change at their discretion.

Last Minute Vacations do not include taxes or any fee for meals, drinks, activities etc. Prices shown for these Cheap Last Minute Vacations are for accommodations for a week and not per person. Normal cleaning charges upon departure are included in these Last Minute Sell Off Vacations. The only additional charge would be tax if the property is required to collect tax or located outside the USA.