by Ann Hood
In 1862, Liliu married John Dominis, the son of an Italian sea captain. They had met briefly while attending the Chiefs’ Children’s School, then remet years later. The marriage proved to be an unhappy one, mainly due to the clash of the two cultures. Liliu’s husband and mother-in-law criticized her English, her handwriting, and even her Hawaiian love of nature and flowers. Her unhappiness led her to spend much of her time traveling to the other Hawaiian islands.
Kamehameha IV died at the age of twenty-nine, a year after Liliu married. Hawaiians believed that he had died because he could not bear to live in a haole, or foreigner’s, world. Prince Lot proclaimed himself king, and took the throne as Kamehameha V. Aware that the cultures were clashing, he drew up a new constitution in 1864 that gave him and his cabinet greater power. It was said of Kamehameha V that after he became king, he became more Hawaiian by the day.
The same can be said of Liliu. Her husband had been named governor of Oahu in 1868, and in her new role as first lady, she had witnessed again and again the loss of Hawaiian culture. When Kamehameha V decided to replace the British anthem “God Save the Queen” with a new Hawaiian national anthem, he asked Liliu to write it. That song is still the unofficial Hawaiian national anthem today.
When Kamehameha V died in 1872 without naming a successor, Prince Lunalilo was elected king. He promised to restore the old constitution of 1852, which favored the haole, or foreigners. After reigning for only a year, he died, and Liliu’s brother, David Kalãkaua, became the next king, which made her Princess Liliuokalani. In addition, he named her heir to the throne. When he died in 1891, she became Queen Liliuokalani. By this time, her Hawaii had changed even more. More and more Americans had moved to Hawaii, and the movement to make Hawaii a United States territory was strong. In 1893, the queen was removed from the throne. Still, she tried to gain a new constitution that would benefit her people. When she failed through the legislative process, she attempted to do so through a monarchal edict.
Liliuokalani was arrested on January 16, 1895, several days after a failed revolution. At her trial she denied knowledge of firearms that had been found at Diamond Head Crater, but she was still sentenced to five years of hard labor in prison by a military tribunal and fined five thousand dollars. Ultimately, the sentence was commuted to imprisonment in an upstairs bedroom of her home in the palace. To the horror and indignation of the Hawaiian people, Liliuokalani was a prisoner in her own home for almost two years. She was forbidden to leave the palace and was under constant watch. There she composed songs, including “The Queen’s Prayer” and “Aloha ‘Oe,” which many believed was her farewell song to her beloved country. It is still a treasured and popular love song in Hawaii.
She was freed on October 6, 1896, and for the rest of her life Liliuokalani fought against the annexation of Hawaii to the United States, and watched as American interests took over the government, the businesses, and even the population of Hawaii. She wrote a book, Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen. In late October 1917, little red fish appeared in the waters around Hawaii. According to Hawaiian beliefs, this predicted the death of an ali‘i. On November 11, Liliuokalani, the last queen of Hawaii, died. At her request, in her casket she wore the crown that she had been forbidden to wear in her later years. On August 21, 1959, Hawaii became the fiftieth state of the United States.
Herman Melville
August 1, 1819–September 28, 1891
Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819. When he was twenty-one years old, he left Fairhaven, Massachusetts, on a whaling ship to the Pacific Ocean. Melville often said that was the day his life really began. In 1842, while in the Marquesas Islands, he jumped ship and lived for three weeks with a tribe of cannibals called the Typee. From there, he sailed on an Australian whaler bound for Tahiti and spent several months as an omoo—Tahitian for “island rover.” He then signed on to another whaler heading for Honolulu, where he worked setting pins in a bowling alley before becoming a store clerk. Melville was a controversial figure in Honolulu because of his opposition to the Christian missionaries and their treatment of native Hawaiians. After several months in Honolulu, he returned to Boston on a frigate.
His experiences in the Pacific are described in his novels Typee, Omoo, and Moby-Dick, the last of which was published in 1851. Although he gained some early literary success, when he died in 1891 he was broke, and he and his books were mostly forgotten. Decades after his death, his work once again found an audience. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is now considered one of the greatest literary masterpieces of all time.
I do so much research for each book in the Treasure Chest series and discover so many cool facts that I can’t fit into every book. Here are some of my favorites from my research for The Treasure Chest: #6 Queen Liliuokalani: Royal Prisoner. Enjoy!
Fun facts about 1959
On August 21, 1959, Hawaii became the fiftieth state. Earlier that year, on January 3, Alaska became the forty-ninth state. No new states have been admitted since Hawaii.
The president was Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Fidel Castro took over Cuba.
American Airlines flew the first transcontinental commercial jet trip from Los Angeles to New York. A round-trip ticket cost about $238. What we now call John F. Kennedy Airport, or JFK, in New York City was then called Idlewild.
The first Grammys were awarded in 1959. The winners included Ella Fitzgerald and Perry Como.
Three of the top new television shows that fall were Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, and The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis. Bonanza ran for fourteen years, The Twilight Zone ran for five, and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis ran for four. One of the stars of Dobie Gillis was Bob Denver, who played the beatnik Maynard G. Krebs. From 1964 to 1967, Denver played Gilligan on Gilligan’s Island.
Walt Disney released the animated movie Sleeping Beauty in 1959.
On November 16, 1959, The Sound of Music opened on Broadway. It played for 1,443 performances and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Although Julie Andrews starred in the 1965 film version, Mary Martin played the role of Maria von Trapp on Broadway and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
The story of The Sound of Music is based on that of a real family. The von Trapps lived in a villa outside Salzburg, Austria. In 1926, Maria was sent to work as a tutor for one of the von Trapp children, who was recovering from scarlet fever. Unlike the fictional von Trapps, who had seven children, the real von Trapps had ten. The play and the film changed the names and the ages of the children, and had Maria become the governess to all of them. They also presented the character of Colonel von Trapp, the children’s father, as a cold, distant man. But the real Colonel von Trapp loved music and was known to be kind and warmhearted. The family did not escape across the Alps after a musical contest. Instead, they left by train to Italy and then continued on to London. They ultimately came to the United States, settling in Vermont, where the mountains reminded them of their home in Austria. In the summer of 1950, the family opened the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont, which is still operated by the von Trapps today. Four of the ten von Trapp children are still alive.
Also, in 1959, Barbie made her debut. Prior to Barbie, dolls were almost always baby dolls. But a woman named Ruth Handler noticed that when her daughter Barbara played with her dolls, she always pretended they were adults. Ruth Handler’s husband was cofounder of the Mattel toy company, and she presented her idea of a doll that looked like a grown-up to him. He told her it was a bad idea.
Traveling in Germany, Ruth Handler saw a doll called Bild Lilli, based on a popular German comic strip. The doll looked like an adult. She was blond and had many outfits. Handler brought one home with her and eventually convinced her husband and Mattel to make an American doll like it.
The first Barbie wore a black-and-white zebra-striped one-piece bathing suit. She featured either a blond or brunette ponytail.
The designer Charlotte Johnson designed her wardrobe. All the clothes were made in Ja
pan, hand-stitched by Japanese women in their homes.
In her first year, three hundred thousand Barbies were sold.
Ann Hood, the author of the Treasure Chest series, owned one of those first Barbies! Hers was blond.
Today, over a billion Barbies have been sold worldwide.
Three Barbies are sold every second.
1959 was also a big year in baseball.
The New York Yankees had dominated baseball throughout the 1950s, appearing in eight out of ten World Series.
At the beginning of the decade, there were three New York baseball teams: the Yankees, the Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. But in the 1950s, many baseball teams moved. The Boston Braves went to Milwaukee in 1953; the St. Louis Browns went to Baltimore in 1954, becoming the Baltimore Orioles; the Philadelphia Athletics went to Kansas City in 1955; and then, in 1958, the New York Giants moved to San Francisco, and the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, leaving only the Yankees in New York until the Mets arrived in 1962.
The Brooklyn Dodgers had won four out of the last six National League pennants before they arrived in LA. But in their debut season there, they finished two games out of last place. However, in 1959 they made it to the World Series against the Chicago White Sox.
The White Sox had not made a postseason appearance since 1919, when the team threw the World Series, intentionally losing games so that the Cincinnati Reds would win the series. Known as the Black Sox, eight players from that team, including their star outfielder, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, were banned from Major League Baseball for life.
The LA Dodgers won the series against the White Sox, four games to two. The White Sox did not make another World Series appearance until 2005, when they swept the Houston Astros. But the LA Dodgers went on to win four more World Series, in 1963, 1965, 1981, and 1988.
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