In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.

The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major volcanic islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaiʻi in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll. Formerly called the Sandwich Islands by Europeans, the present name for the archipelago is derived from the name of its largest island, Hawaiʻi.

Captain James Cook was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer who led three important voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans between 1768 and 1779. He completed the first recorded circumnavigation of the main islands of New Zealand, and was the first European to visit the east coast of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands.

Maui is the second-largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km²). It is the 17th-largest in the United States. Maui is one of Maui County's four sizable islands, along with Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, and Kahoʻolawe.