Hawaii Islands

Hawaiian Islands

Native name: Mokupuni o Hawai‘i
True color satellite image of the Hawaiian Islands
Map of the Hawaiian Islands, a chain of islands that stretches 1,500 mi (2,400 km) in a northwesterly direction from the southern tip of the island of Hawaiʻi.
Geography
Location	North Pacific Ocean
Highest point	Mauna Kea 13,796 ft (4,205 m)
Administration
United States ( Hawaii,  Midway Atoll)
Demographics
Population	1,450,000 (2015)

The Hawaiian Islands (Hawaiian: Mokupuni o Hawai‘i) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) from the island of Hawaiʻi 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.

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 1,860 miles (3,000 km) from the nearest continent.