Short answers, pulled from the story.
North America covers an area of around 24,709,000 square kilometers. That represents approximately 16.5% of Earth's land area and 4.8% of its total surface area. It is the third-largest continent by size after Asia and Africa.
The Americas were named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. In 1507 Waldseemüller placed the word "America" on a world map, using a Latinized feminine form of Vespucci's name to match Europa, Asia, and Africa. Mapmakers later extended the name to North America.
People are known to have lived in the Americas at least 20,000 years ago, though some evidence points to earlier dates. The traditional theory holds that hunters crossed the Bering Land Bridge between eastern Siberia and Alaska between 27,000 and 14,000 years ago, while a growing view is that the first inhabitants sailed from Beringia some 13,000 years ago.
The Norse explorer Leif Erikson, who lived from roughly 970 to 1020 CE, is thought to have been the first European to make landfall on the continent, excluding Greenland. The earliest verifiable European contact with the mainland dates to around 1000 CE at the northern tip of Newfoundland.
The United States is the most populous country in North America with 342.9 million people. Mexico is second with 126 million, and Canada is third with 41.5 million. North America's total population is estimated at over 592 million people across 23 independent states and territories.
The Aztec Empire was conquered in 1521 by Hernán Cortés, who had sailed westward to the Mexican mainland in 1519. With local indigenous allies, the Spanish defeated the Aztec Empire centered on its capital Tenochtitlan in the Valley of Mexico.