Hawaii

More than a thousand years ago, Polynesian voyagers crossed over 2,000 miles of open Pacific Ocean and found Hawaii. They had no compass, no maps, no instruments of any kind.

They navigated by the stars, the patterns of ocean swells, and the flight paths of birds. Everything they knew was passed down by memory from one generation to the next.

By 1810, a warrior chief named Kamehameha I had united all the Hawaiian Islands into one kingdom. Hawaii had its own constitution, its own currency, and diplomats stationed around the world.

That ended in 1893. A group of American and European businessmen, backed by U.S. Marines, overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani. She surrendered to avoid bloodshed, believing the U.S. government would reverse it. It didn't.

The United States annexed Hawaii in 1898. Native Hawaiians organized a mass petition against it, but Congress went ahead anyway. In 1993, a hundred years later, Congress officially apologized for the overthrow.

On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor, killing more than 2,300 Americans. The next day, the United States entered World War II.

Hawaii wasn't even a state yet. That didn't happen until 1959, when it became the 50th.

You can visit Pearl Harbor on Oahu and take a boat to the USS Arizona Memorial, which sits right above the sunken battleship where 1,177 sailors still rest. In downtown Honolulu, tour ʻIolani Palace, the only royal palace on American soil.

On the Big Island, watch lava reshape the coastline at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. Then grab a plate lunch with kalua pork, rice, and macaroni salad from any roadside spot, and you'll eat like a local.