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| 1769 |
| | | Captain Cook observes in Tahiti the transit of Venus, the primary purpose of his voyage to the Pacific | |
|  | Hodges Tahiti Revisited (detail)
National Maritime Museum
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| 1772 |
| | | Captain Cook sets off, in HMS Resolution, on his second voyage to the southern hemisphere | |
|  | Mourner's costume from Tahiti
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
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| 1779 |
| | | British explorer Captain James Cook is killed in a skirmish with natives in Hawaii over a stolen boat | |
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| 1789 |
| | | Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny on HMS Bounty against the captain, William Bligh | |
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| 1875 |
| | | An outbreak of measles in Fiji, brought to the islands by British visitors, kills a quarter of the population | |
|  | Medicine man, Australia
Wellcome Library, London
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| 1891 |
| | | French artist Paul Gauguin travels to Tahiti and stays in the Pacific islands for most of the rest of his life | |
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| 1898 |
| | | The Hawaiian islands are made a US territory, five years after American involvement in the overthrow of the ruling dynasty | |
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| 1928 |
| | | US anthropologist Margaret Mead makes much of trouble-free sex among natives, in Coming of Age in Samoa, but her findings are subsequently disputed | |
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| 1941 December 7 |
| | | Without warning, 400 Japanese planes attack and destroy US warships at anchor in Pearl Harbor | |
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| 1942 March 8 |
| | | The Japanese invasion of Papua signals the start of the three-year New Guinea campaign | |
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