History
Hawaiʻi is said to have been named for Hawaiʻiloa, the legendary Polynesian navigator who first discovered it. Other accounts attribute the name to the legendary realm of Hawaiki, a place from which the Polynesians originated (see also Manua), the place where they go in the afterlife, the realm of the gods and goddesses. Captain James Cook, who called them the "Sandwich Islands", was killed on the Big Island at Kealakekua Bay. Hawaiʻi was the home island of Paiʻea Kamehameha, called Kamehameha the Great, who by 1795 united most of the Hawaiian Islands under his rule after several years of war. He gave his Kingdom of Hawaii the name of his native island, and the islands in chain are known collectively as "Hawaiian Islands".
Read more about this topic: Hawaii (island)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
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“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
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