United States Geological SurveyThe United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the United States government whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on March 3, 1879, to study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The agency also makes maps of extraterrestrial planets and moons based on data from U.S. space probes.
UkuleleThe ukulele (ˌjuːkəˈleɪli ; from ukulele ˈʔukuˈlɛlɛ, approximately ), also called a uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings. The tone and volume of the instrument vary with size and construction. Ukuleles commonly come in four sizes: soprano, concert, tenor, and baritone. Developed in the 1880s, the ukulele is based on several small, guitar-like instruments of Portuguese origin, the machete, cavaquinho, timple, and rajão, introduced to the Hawaiian Islands by Portuguese immigrants from Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde.
Hawaiian PidginHawaiian Pidgin (alternately, Hawaiʻi Creole English or HCE, known locally as Pidgin) is an English-based creole language spoken in Hawaiʻi. An estimated 600,000 residents of Hawaii speak Hawaiian Pidgin natively and 400,000 speak it as a second language. Although English and Hawaiian are the two official languages of the state of Hawaiʻi, Hawaiian Pidgin is spoken by many Hawaiian residents in everyday conversation and is often used in advertising targeted toward locals in Hawaiʻi.
Slack-key guitarSlack-key guitar (from Hawaiian kī hōalu, which means "loosen the [tuning] key") is a fingerstyle genre of guitar music that originated in Hawaii. Nearly all slack key requires retuning the guitar strings from standard (EADGBE), and this usually (but not always) means lowering or "slacking" several strings. The result will most often be an open major chord, although it can also be a major-seventh chord, a sixth, or (rarely) a minor. (There are examples of slack key played in standard tuning, but the overwhelming majority of recorded examples use altered tunings.
Pearl HarborPearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands are now a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the United States Pacific Fleet. The U.S. government first obtained exclusive use of the inlet and the right to maintain a repair and coaling station for ships here in 1887.
