Back in the 1700s, it seemed an island wasn’t an island if it hadn’t been discovered by Capt. James Cook. The British explorer flitted about the Pacific in a variety of voyages, visiting Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia and a bevy of other islands. Rather fittingly, he met his maker at the hands of natives in the Hawaiian Islands (and, no, it wasn’t because he had renamed them the Sandwich Islands).
If Cook were to visit the Hawaiian Islands today, he’d find the natives less testy. In fact, they’d probably insist on draping a lei around his neck and maybe offering him a sandwich. And when he went home, he might take with him an aloha shirt that he could slip into on a cold winter night and imagine himself back in the tropical paradise.
Thanks to a surge of interest in the past few years, you don’t have to go to Hawaii to snag one of these cool, cool shirts. But these beauties all do come from the friendly folks in our only island state.
