Okay, so anybody who's attended elementary school in the United Canadian and American States will know that Hawai'i used to be the fiftieth state of the union. What I hadn't known was that this was originally accomplished not by negotiation, but actually through the actions of a U.S. naval officer who'd placed his gunboat at the disposal of some American robber barons who considered that the incumbent national government was actually an obstacle to doing business. (Who says history never repeats itself? A corporation effectively taking over a sovereign state? Sounds like the early twenty-first century, neh!) Once the incumbent monarch, King Kamehameha III, was ousted, one Sanford B. Dole—a high corp muckamuck who'd made his fortune in pineapples, or some damn thing—named himself head of state of the entire island chain.