Kamehameha Day on June 11 is a public holiday of the state of Hawaii in the United States. It honors Kamehameha the Great, the monarch who first established the unified Kingdom of Hawaiʻi — comprising the Hawaiian Islands of Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui and Hawaiʻi. While he was king, Hawaii was a center of the fur and sandalwood trade. Pineapples were brought to Hawaii from Spain in 1813 and coffee was first planted in 1818, a year before he died. In 1883 a statue of King Kamehameha I was dedicated in Honolulu by King David Kalākaua (this was a duplicate, because the original statue was lost at sea). There is another duplicate of this statue in Emancipation Hall at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C.
Read more about Kamehameha Day: Establishment, Floral Parade, Draping Ceremony, Celebration
Famous quotes containing the word day:
“One day beside some flowers near his nose
He will be thinking, When will I look at it?
And pain, still in the middle distance, will reply,
At what? and he will know it’s gone,
O where! and begin to tremble and cry.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)