Rip Van Winkle was a character in a short story by the American writer Washington Irving. In the story, Rip lived in a little town in the Hudson Valley, in New York, in the 1770s, around the time of the American Revolution. Rip went our hunting one day, took a nap under a tree, and fell asleep. He woke up 20 years later to find himself a citizon of a bran-new country--The United States of America.