Hawaiian Islands

The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1500mi from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll. Formerly the group was known to Europeans and Americans as the "Sandwich Islands", a name chosen by James Cook in honor of the then First Lord of the Admiralty John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. The contemporary name is derived from the name of the largest island, Hawaii Island.The Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown in 1893 and the United States annexed the islands in 1898. The U.S. state of Hawaii now occupies the archipelago almost in its entirety (including the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands), with the sole exception of Midway Island, which instead separately belongs to the United States as one of its unincorporated territories within the United States Minor Outlying Islands.