50 Fun Facts About Oahu

Which Oahu landmark's Hawaiian name, Leahi, is thought to liken its ridgeline to a tuna's dorsal fin?

Diamond Head got its English name in 1825, when British sailors mistook calcite crystals in the sand for gems.

Which internet term did programmer Ward Cunningham borrow from the name of the shuttle at Honolulu's airport?

Wiki means quick in Hawaiian, and the Wiki Wiki Shuttle that carries passengers between terminals inspired the name of the first user-editable website in 1994.

Oahu's H-1, H-2 and H-3 freeways belong to which national road network despite never leaving the island?

Interstate Highways on Oahu were approved by Congress in 1960, a year after statehood. Protests and lawsuits kept H-3 from opening until 1997, at a cost of $1.3 billion.

Which Oahu visitor attraction near Wahiawa is home to a three-acre garden maze declared the world's largest in 2008?

Dole Plantation's Pineapple Garden Maze winds through nearly two and a half miles of paths lined with 14,000 Hawaiian plants.

Which Honolulu home of King Kalakaua was among the world's first royal residences lit by electricity, in 1886?

Iolani Palace also had indoor plumbing and a telephone, after its king visited Thomas Edison to see electric lighting demonstrated.

Which singer, born Peter Hernandez in Honolulu, performed with a family band at the Sheraton Waikiki from age four?

Bruno Mars sang with his family's band, the Love Notes, five days a week, and later attended Roosevelt High School in Honolulu.

In which season do storm swells from the North Pacific bring the biggest surf to Oahu's North Shore?

Winter waves on the North Shore average around 16 feet on the face and can rise to 45 feet or more at the peak of the season.

Which battleship, on whose deck the Second World War formally ended, is now moored at Oahu's Ford Island?

USS Missouri was brought to Oahu in 1998 so that a symbol of the war's end could sit beside the sunken wreck that marks its beginning for America.

Which singer's 1961 benefit concert in Honolulu raised about $64,000 toward building the USS Arizona Memorial?

Elvis Presley would not perform live again until 1968. The memorial his show helped to fund was dedicated on Memorial Day the following year.

Which Oahu lagoon, once too shallow at its entrance for large ships, became headquarters of the US Pacific Fleet?

Pearl Harbor was known to Hawaiians as Wai Momi, or waters of pearl, and legend made it the home of a shark goddess.

Which Oahu snorkelling spot formed when waves broke through the seaward wall of a 32,000-year-old volcano?

Hanauma Bay became Hawaii's first Marine Life Conservation District, and at one time drew more than three million visitors a year.

Which ruler took Oahu by trapping its defenders above the Nuuanu Pali cliffs, then founded the Hawaiian Kingdom?

Kamehameha I sailed from Hawaii Island with an army of 10,000, and road workers found some 800 skulls beneath the cliffs in 1898.

Which queen, Hawaii's last monarch, was held prisoner in an upstairs bedroom of her former royal residence in 1895?

Liliuokalani gave up her throne while confined there to save jailed supporters from the gallows, and stitched a quilt that is still on display.

Which nickname does Oahu carry, fitting for an island that holds about 70 percent of Hawaii's people?

The Gathering Place was offered as a translation of the island's name only in 1922, by almanac author Thomas Thrum. The name has no other confirmed meaning.

Which Olympic swimming champion from Waikiki spread surfing worldwide and later served 13 terms as Sheriff of Honolulu?

Duke Kahanamoku won 100-metre freestyle gold in 1912 and 1920, and his 1914 display at Sydney's Freshwater Beach helped launch surfing in Australia.

Which Hawaiian mountain chain behind Honolulu is the surviving half of one volcano whose other half slid into the sea?

The Koolau Range is no true range at all: it began as a single volcano, and its name means windward in Hawaiian.

Which headland, Oahu's westernmost tip, was in Hawaiian tradition the jumping-off place for souls leaving the world?

Kaena Point is ringed by the first predator-proof fence built in the United States, and albatross chicks have multiplied behind it since 2011.

Which actor played the Ferrari-driving private eye living on a beachfront Oahu estate in Magnum, P.I.?

Tom Selleck's Thomas Magnum lived in the guesthouse of Robin's Nest, a 200-acre estate whose caretaker patrolled with Dobermanns named Zeus and Apollo.

Which frozen treat did Californian surfers help popularise at North Shore stores such as Matsumoto's in Haleiwa?

Shave ice at Matsumoto's can mean a wait of more than half an hour, with over 1,000 servings sold in a day.

Which Honolulu landmark, the Hill of Sacrifice in Hawaiian, holds the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific?

Punchbowl opened to the public as a cemetery in 1949 with services for five war dead, among them the correspondent Ernie Pyle.

The Byodo-In Temple in Oahu's Valley of the Temples is a concrete replica of an 11th-century temple in which country?

Japan's original stands at Uji, near Kyoto, and was built of wood without nails. The Oahu copy was dedicated in 1968, a century after the first Japanese immigrants arrived.

Honolulu's Kawaiahao Church, a royal chapel, was built from some 14,000 slabs of which material?

Coral blocks weighing about 1,000 pounds each were chiselled from an offshore reef by divers working three to six metres down.

Which disease was Honolulu fighting in 1900 when a controlled burn of infected buildings destroyed Chinatown?

Bubonic plague had killed 13 people when the Board of Health ordered suspect buildings burned. A shift in the wind then carried the flames through most of the district.

Which Honolulu waterway was dug in the 1920s to drain the rice paddies and swamps that became Waikiki?

The Ala Wai Canal's builder sold the mud he dredged from it so that developers could raise the level of the new land alongside.

Which church opened the Polynesian Cultural Center at Laie in 1963, partly so its university students could earn wages?

Latter-day Saints leaders grew the idea from beach feasts held to rebuild a burned chapel, and the centre has since helped more than 12,000 students pay their way.

Which annual NFL fixture called Honolulu's Aloha Stadium home from 1980 through 2016, missing only two seasons?

The Pro Bowl's old home had four 7,000-seat stands that glided on cushions of air to reshape the arena for football, baseball or concerts.

Which 1953 film staged its famous surf-soaked beach embrace at Halona Cove on Oahu's southeastern shore?

From Here to Eternity put Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in the waves there, and 50 First Dates returned to the same cove half a century later.

Oahu was the first Hawaiian island Captain James Cook sighted in 1778, but on which island did he land instead?

Kauai got the first landing, and a year passed before Cook's deputy Charles Clerke became the first recorded outsider to step ashore on Oahu.

Which mystery drama, shot almost entirely on Oahu, used Honolulu streets as stand-ins for Iraq, Paris and Australia?

Lost filmed its pilot's first island scenes at Mokuleia Beach near Oahu's northwest tip, around a retired airliner that was cut up and shipped to Hawaii to play the wreck.

Which Honolulu academy, founded by missionaries in 1841 over a natural spring, counts Barack Obama among its graduates?

Punahou School took Obama in the fifth grade in 1971, and he stayed on with his grandparents in Honolulu to graduate there in 1979.

Which cocktail did Waikiki bartender Harry Yee invent in 1957 after a distiller asked him to showcase its curaçao?

Blue Hawaii is thought to be named after a song from a 1937 Bing Crosby film, and Yee finished the drink with a pineapple wedge and a paper umbrella.

Which Honolulu mall, built on a filled-in wetland, was the largest in the United States when it opened in 1959?

Ala Moana Center rose on swamp that a dredging magnate bought in 1912 and filled in, and its owner bills it as the world's largest open-air mall.

Which plain name does the public bus network on Oahu, twice named America's best transit system, operate under?

TheBus is run for the city by a nonprofit, and its service for disabled riders carries the matching name TheHandi-Van.

Which Honolulu-born entertainer, famous for Tiny Bubbles, began singing at Honey's, his mother's bar on windward Oahu?

Don Ho left the Air Force in 1959 to help with the family business, then carried the act to Waikiki in 1963, where record company scouts found him.

A visitor in Honolulu told to head makai, a Hawaiian direction word used across the islands, should go which way?

Toward the ocean is makai, built on the Hawaiian word kai for sea, and its opposite, mauka, points inland to the mountains.

Which North Shore surf spot hosts the Eddie Aikau invitational, run only when swells reach a 20-foot minimum?

Waimea Bay's contest honours the North Shore's first lifeguard, and most winters pass without it because the swell so rarely qualifies.

Which valley on Honolulu's inland side holds the flagship campus of the University of Hawaii?

Manoa's campus is one of only three in the country to hold land-grant, sea-grant, space-grant and sun-grant status all at once.

Which body of water on Oahu's windward coast is partly enclosed by a peninsula occupied by Marine Corps Base Hawaii?

Kaneohe Bay is the largest sheltered body of water in the main Hawaiian Islands, and its Coconut Island appears in the opening credits of Gilligan's Island.

Which Honolulu institution, a banker's memorial to his royal wife, holds the world's largest Polynesian collection?

Bishop Museum began as a home for royal heirlooms and now also keeps more than 13.5 million insects, the third-largest such collection in the United States.

Which island faces Oahu across the 26-mile Kaiwi Channel, the course of long-distance outrigger canoe races?

Molokai lends its name to the canoe and paddleboard races that cross the channel, whose Hawaiian name, Ka Iwi, means the bone.

Which Medal of Honor recipient and long-serving US senator lends his name to Honolulu's international airport?

Daniel Inouye's name replaced plain Honolulu International on an airfield that had opened in 1927 as John Rodgers Airport, after a naval officer.

Which town ceased to be capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom when the royal court moved to Honolulu in 1845?

Lahaina, on Maui, saw the court leave for a port whose accessible harbour had already made it Oahu's leading town, ahead of Waikiki.

Which animals, bred there by a sugar planter in the 1880s, gave Manana Island off windward Oahu its common name?

Rabbits were cleared from the islet about a century later because they were wrecking a seabird nesting ground. Its outline is also said to resemble the animal's head.

Which Oahu hike climbs the ties of an abandoned wartime military railroad straight to bunkers on the summit?

Koko Crater's rails once served military bunkers on the rim, and a nonprofit called the Kokonut Koalition now maintains the route for the city.

Which peak in the Waianae Range, topped by an FAA tracking station closed to the public, is Oahu's highest point?

Kaala rises a little over 4,000 feet, and the white dome on its summit, secured by the Army, can be seen from far across the island.

Shangri La, a Honolulu mansion built by an heiress after her 1930s honeymoon, now displays which artistic tradition?

Islamic art won its owner over on a honeymoon through Egypt, India and the Middle East, and the house opened to the public in 2002.

Which lighthouse on Oahu's southeastern tip, first lit in 1909, has the largest lens of any in the United States?

Makapuu Point's giant lens was shown at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair before it reached Hawaii, and it survived being shot by a vandal in 1984.

The Kukaniloko stones in central Oahu were a sacred place where Hawaiian chiefly families went to do what?

To give birth there marked a child for the highest rank among Oahu's chiefs, and the stones may also have worked as a calendar.

The columns ringing the open-air Hawaii State Capitol in Honolulu are shaped to resemble which kind of tree?

Palm trunks inspired the columns, cone-shaped chambers stand for the islands' fiery origins, and the pool around the building represents the Pacific.

Which windward Oahu town, home to Lanikai Beach, became Barack Obama's holiday retreat while he was president?

Kailua's offshore islets, the Mokulua, are protected seabird sanctuaries that locals call the Mokes and paddle out to by kayak.