It has long been considered a true paradise on Earth. The weather and temperature is always perfect and there are few, if any, natural disasters to stay clear of like hurricanes, earthquakes or snow storms. It is America’s 50th state yet there is so little most people even know about the Hawaiian Islands. Here are some things you really don’t know…
- Contrary to popular belief, the big island of Hawaii doesn’t get the most tourists every year. That has always been the reserve of the island of Oahu.
- The planet’s largest and most consistently active volcano is Kilauea and it has been erupting for 60,000 years. The island of Hawaii continues to grow by more than 40 acres a year because of the lava flow creating new land out into the ocean.
- During the 1960’s, NASA made their astronauts train on the giant lava fields of Mauna Loa because they believed it best resembled the ground on the moon.
- There are only twelve letters in the Hawaiian alphabet. There are five vowels and seven consonants and every word in the language ends with one of these vowels.
- A part of the islands, Molokai, was a leper colony for many decades.
- Spam is a perennial favorite with Hawaiians and even the local restaurants, including Burger King and McDonald’s, serve spam.
- Hawaiians are not “natives”. If you call someone of Hawaiian ancestry a native, it will be considered the height of rudeness. People who are not descended from original Hawaiians are called “locals” even if they grew up on the islands.
- When British explorer Captain James Cook stumbled onto the islands in 1778, he named them the Sandwich Islands in deference to the man who funded his voyage, the British Earl of Sandwich. And yes, the Earl did actually invent the sandwich as we now know it.
- Tourists, it seems love to pick up small volcanic rocks from the Kilauea volcano but the Hawaiian forest service says that thousands of them are mailed back to them every year with notes claiming the rocks had brought their owners nothing but bad luck. Apparently, the Hawaiian goddess Pele is not amused when humans take the volcanic rocks away.
- Hawaii is the only state that has a tropical rain forest and no billboards. In 1927, Hawaii passed a law forbidding the construction and display of billboards anywhere on any of the islands.
- Surfing was, indeed, invented there thousands of years ago as a way to more easily travel between the islands.
- When British Christian missionaries came to the islands in the 19th century to “civilize” the people, they gave them all plain white shirts to wear so the missionaries wouldn’t be offended by their naked chests. The Hawaiians thought them ridiculous and boring so decided to paint them bright colors. Thus, the Hawaiian short was born.
- PHOTO CREDITS: Pixabay