Quick Stats
Area: 24,490,000 km^2 - 9,460,000 mi^2
% of World Mass: 16.5%
Population: 528,720,588
% of World Population: 8%
People per km^2: 21
People per mi^2: 54
Most Populated City: Mexico-City,Mexico
North America is one of the largest continents in the world and the majority of it is spread across the Northern Hemisphere and Western Hemisphere. North America shares borders with the Artic, Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean with the south of the continent rubbing shoulders with South America, a completely separate Continent. The area of land mass in North America is calculated to cover just under 25 million square kilometres and as a percentage just under 5% of the whole worlds surface, or just over sixteen percent of its visible land. North America is home to roughly half a billion human beings giving it the title of the fourth most populated continent on this planet, loosing to Asia, Africa & Europe.
The Name
North America gets its name (as widely believed by historians) from an Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci. This explorer who dominated world exploration during the late years of the 16th century suggested that the land that they had been documenting was not the East Indies as previously believed but a new land unknown to the rest of the world. Following this discovery, a few years later a team produced a map that contained the name "America" somewhere in South America in what is known as Brazil today. As map makers eventually documented North America as well as the South America they carried over this name.
States
Kentucky
