Advent 2021: once around the world: hawaii
We are looking forward to the Christmas vacation, but we still have a lot to do before then. After all, today we are making a stopover in paradise.
Answer to yesterday's question
Mac-OS X? It was first named after cats and then after places in California? The Kodiak bear is neither a cat nor a Californian, but was actually godfather of the public beta of Mac-OS X, but only in Apple's internal use. Officially the nicknames are only since Mac-OS X 10.2 Jaguar.
After the second youngest state in the U.S. yesterday, today we visit the youngest, Hawaii, which only joined the U.S. in 1959. Three Apple Stores invite to Christmas shopping, all in the capital Honolulu. In general, life on the archipelago is concentrated mainly on the island of Oahu and around the capital, which has almost one million inhabitants in the metropolitan region. Just about 450.000 are added on the rest of the island and the others.
Geologically, the region is also relatively young and has an interesting structure: the islands are basically drops of a volcano that pierces the earth's plate and the sea at this point and whose magma solidifies in the water and in the air. Why the islands appear to be strung on a string of pearls is due to the fact that the Pacific plate is, in a sense, moving across this hotspot, gradually creating new islands.
In Hawaii, on Big Island to be exact, you'll find one of the three largest mountains in the world. Well, Mount Everest in the Himalayas, which is actually called Qomolangma, is still the highest elevation compared to normal zero. And since Kilimanjaro grows almost from normal zero to almost 6000 meters, you can also consider it the highest mountain in the world. But maybe Mauna Kea is the real record holder, with its 4200 meters above sea level.N. but the true giant of giants, because the base on which Hawaii stands lies 5400 meters below sea level. So in addition we almost come to 10.000 meters. The clear high-altitude air and relative remoteness from civilization make Mauna Kea and its observatory a dream destination for astronomers, while other tourists appreciate the mild climate, especially at the time when it is otherwise quite gruesome in the northern hemisphere.
It was this location that prompted the U.S. to annex Hawaii in 1898 and integrate it as a federal state after World War II. Situated halfway to Asia, the archipelago is of highest strategic importance. The naval base Pearl Harbor, which existed there since the First World War, was the first target of attack of the army of the Empire of Japan, the 7. December 1941 marked the U.S. entry into World War II, at the end of which was the Nagasaki bomb – which we'll come back to later in our trip.
Pearl Harbor is also the inspiration for the speech in which Bill Gates declared war in 1995. The then Microsoft CEO did not express himself quite so martially, but the competition from Netscape in particular had understood the announcement from Redmond to enter the lucrative browser market as a declaration of war. Hardly anyone knows the opponents of yesteryear today. Netscape Navigator? Internet Explorer? Terms from the pioneering days of the World Wide Web. The "e" of the Explorer still lives on in its successor, the Edge, but today we prefer to go on safari or to the opera in a shiny chrome fire fox.
Today's question:
Today we leave the USA after six time zones. Will there be more of them at some point? More United States could be coming soon, however: There are serious discussions about whether the U.S. won't have to change the flag again and put a 51st star on it. Which region should go 51st state if Democrats have their way?
- Washington D.C.
- Puerto Rico
- Guam