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The Hawaiian Islands () are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 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 main island, Hawaii Island. The Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown in 1893 and the United States annexed the islands in 1898. The US 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 is instead an unincorporated territory within the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The Hawaiian Islands are the exposed peaks of a great undersea mountain range known as the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, formed by volcanic activity over a hotspot in the Earth's mantle. The islands are about from the nearest continent.〔Macdonald, Abbott, and Peterson, 1984〕 ==Islands and reefs== (詳細はJames Cook visited the islands on January 18, 1778 and named them the "Sandwich Islands" in honor of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who was one of his sponsors as the First Lord of the Admiralty. This name was in use until the 1840s, when the local name "Hawaii" gradually began to take precedence. The Hawaiian Islands have a total land area of . Except for Midway, which is an unincorporated territory of the United States, these islands and islets are administered as the state of Hawaii—the 50th state of the United States of America. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hawaiian Islands」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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