The annexation of Hawaii

The United States annexed the Republic of Hawaii in 1898, and soon thereafter appropriately re-named it the Territory of Hawaii.

Why? Well ... my vague impression until recently was that like much that has happened since, this was about energy and oil. Specifically, Hawaii had become the crucial mid-Pacific stop for whaling ships.

But I've had to revise that. The whaling voyages made Hawaii of strategic interest, but they don't really explain the need for annexation. After all, the ships had been stopping there for decades. If Hawaii had remained an independent republic, would there have been a threat to whaling?

Hawaii hadn't been a republic for very long. It had been a monarchy until 1893. It was only a republic, then, for a brief period prior to its annexation -- a path similar to that of the Lone Star Republic/State.

And the dramatic events all had more to do with sugar than with oil. Energy yes, oil no.

Some anniversaries

Today, is, of course, the winter solstice, that moment when the sun gets as low to the horizon as it's going to get and begins its long rise.

The solstice doesn't always fall on the 21st -- that moment can come on the 20th or the 22d. But it does come today this year (at 7:04 EST),to be precise.

The 21st is also remarkable for the following anniversaries.

This day in 1898, Pierre and Marie Currie discovered radium;
in 1913 the first modern crossword puzzle as published in a New York newspaper, the creation of a Liverpool-born journalist, Arthur Wynne;
in 1958 Charles DeGaulle was elected the first president of Frane's fifth republic; and in 1968 Apollo 8, which would successfully orbit the moon and return to earth with its three-astronaut crew, launched itself majestically from its Florida pad.

Just because the sun often stands still on this date, it doesn't follow that human history must.