Hawaii is made up of eight main islands and a number of smaller ones, and it is encircled by the Pacific Ocean. The capital of Hawaii is Honolulu. Other important cities are Hilo, Kailua, and Waipahu.

It is thought that the first settlers of Hawaii were Polynesians, who may have come from the Marquesas Islands around AD 400, and then were followed by an influx from Tahiti about 500 years later.

Europeans originally came to the islands around six or seven hundred years later, in the year 1778, when Captain Cook discovered them, which ended centuries of isolation.

The motto of Hawaii, created in 1843, is Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono, and that means “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness,” which is a quotation from King Kamehameha III. The king once said these words after a puzzling situation was solved : a British sea captain, asserting that the Hawaiian nobility owed huge debts, in effect ceded the islands to the British, thought he did not have legal authority to do so. The rule of Hawaii was officially given back by Admiral Richard Thomas, and the king’s comments were his response.

The state flag of Hawaii is unique for a US state flag in that it shows a Union Jack in the upper left, which indicates the role of the United Kingdom in the state’s history.