In 1791, a royal dynasty was established under King Kamehameha the Great.
Cook named the chain the “Sandwich Islands” in honor of John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, one of his voyage's patrons., James Cook became the first documented Westerner to land on Hawaii. Around 1000 A.D., Tahitians arrived, along with their belief in God and the practice of the kapu system, a hierarchical social order similar to caste in Hindu culture. The islands’ history dates back to around 1,500 years ago when Polynesians sailed to the islands.
The state, comprised of eight islands, is known as a tourism paradise, and as the site of a Japanese attack in 1941 that prompted the U.S. Hawaii is the most recent addition to the United States, becoming a state on Aug.
