08-03-2026, 06:46 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-03-2026, 07:51 PM by Moderator 2.)
(02-28-2026, 05:40 PM)ironyak Wrote: Begging randomq's indulgence, and riffing on the thread's "Li-Fē-P-O" title, did you know that apparently George Lucas fled to Hawai'i during the opening of Star Wars in 1977, fearing the possible bad reviews? While chilling on the local beaches with Steven Spielberg and reminiscing about their favorite spy and adventure films, Lucas pitched him on an idea he had for a daring archeologist that had to locate the Ark of the Covenant before Hitler and the "Roman saluting" Nazi's could get their hands on it - the adventures of Indiana Smith! (was still a work in progress - needed a few more mai tais to workshop it
most here should know the Hiram Bingham Ohana well............the movie 'Indiana Jones' is based on 1 Hawaii born faka named Hiram Bingham III...
the guy who rediscovered Machu Pichu and many other chit...
Hiram Bingham III
(Hawaii born 1875-1956)
Hawaii born Hiram Bingham III was an American academic, Explorer and Politician.
In 1911 he rediscovered and publicized the existence of the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu,
rediscovered with the guidance of local indigenous farmers.
Later, Bingham served as the 69th Governor of Connecticut for a single day in 1925—the shortest term in history.
He had been elected in 1924 as governor, but was also elected to the Senate and chose that position.
He served as a member of the United States Senate until 1933.
Bingham III was born in Honolulu, Hawaii,
the son of Clara Brewster and Hiram Bingham II (1831–1908), an early Protestant missionary to the Kingdom of Hawai'i.
He was also the grandson of Hiram Bingham I (1789–1869) and Sybil Moseley Bingham (1792–1848), earlier missionaries.
Through his mother's side he was a descendant of William Brewster, a Mayflower passenger.
He attended O'ahu College, now known as Punahou School, from 1882 to 1892.
Bingham went to the United States in his teens in order to undertake higher education,
He earned a B.A. degree from Yale College in 1898,
a degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1900,
where he took one of the first courses in Latin American history offered in the United States,
and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1905.
In his first academic position, he taught history and politics at Harvard.
He next served as preceptor (teacher) under Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University.
Princeton "did not much favor Latin American history."
But in 1907, when Yale sought a replacement for Bourne, who had died an early death,
it appointed Bingham as a lecturer in South American history.
He became one of the pioneers in the U.S. of teaching and research on Latin American history.
Explorer
Bingham was not a trained archaeologist.
But while he served at Yale as a lecturer and professor in South American history at Yale,
he journeyed to South America and rediscovered the largely forgotten Inca city of Machu Picchu.
In 1908 he had served as a delegate to the First Pan American Scientific Congress at Santiago, Chile.
On his way home via Peru, a local prefect convinced him to visit the pre-Columbian city of Choquequirao.
Bingham published an account of this trip in Across South America;
an account of a journey from Buenos Aires to Lima by way of Potosí,
with notes on Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru (1911).
Bingham was thrilled by the prospect of unexplored Inca cities, and organized the 1911 Yale Peruvian Expedition,
one of the objectives of which was to search for the last capital of the Incas.
Guided by locals, he rediscovered and correctly identified both Vitcos (then called Rosaspata)
and Vilcabamba (then called Espíritu Pampa), which he named "Eromboni Pampa".
On July 24, 1911, Melchor Arteaga led Bingham to Machu Picchu,
which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people
living in the immediate valley.
Bingham returned to Peru in 1912, 1914, and 1915
with the support of Yale and the National Geographic Society.
Machu Picchu has become one of the major tourist attractions in South America.
Bingham is recognized as the man who brought the site to world attention, although many others helped.
The switchback-filled road that carries tourist buses to the site
from the Urubamba River is called Carretera Hiram Bingham (the Hiram Bingham Highway).
Bingham's book Lost City of the Incas became a bestseller upon its publication in 1948.
Bingham has been cited as a possible inspiration for the film character Harry Steele,
played by Charlton Heston in the 1954 film Secret of the Incas,
which is about a fictional archaeological dig at Machu Pichu, and shot on location.
The Steele character, and some scenarios in that film,
subsequently inspired the film character Indiana Jones,
and the 'Map room' scenario in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Military
Bingham achieved the rank of Captain of the Connecticut National Guard in 1916.
In 1917, he became an Aviator and organized the United States Schools of Military Aeronautics
at 8 universities to provide ground school training for aviation cadets.
He served the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps and the Air Service, attaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
In Issoudun, France, Bingham commanded the Third Aviation Instruction Center,
the Air Service's largest primary instruction and pursuit training school.
Politics
In 1922, Bingham was elected Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut, an office he held until 1924.
In November 1924, he was elected governor.
On December 16, 1924, Bingham was also elected to serve in the United States Senate
to fill a vacancy created by the suicide of Frank Bosworth Brandegee.
Bingham defeated noted educator Hamilton Holt by a handy margin.
Now both governor-elect and senator-elect,
Bingham served as governor for one day (January 7-8, 1925),
the shortest term of any Connecticut governor,
before resigning to take his Senate seat.
On June 6, 1956, Bingham died at his Washington, D.C. home.
He was interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Hiram Bingham II
(Hawaii born 1831-1908)
Born in Honolulu, Bingham II was the sixth child
of early missionary Hiram Bingham I (1789–1869) and Sybil Moseley Bingham (1792–1848).
Only ten years old in 1840, Bingham II was sent to the United States
with his siblings Elizabeth Kaahumanu (1829–1899) and Lydia Bingham (1834–1915) to attend school.
Bingham II was enrolled at Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
He graduated from Yale University in 1853 and then studied at Andover Theological Seminary.
Bingham II was ordained a Congregationalist minister
in New Haven, Connecticut, on November 9, 1856.
Nine days later on November 18,
Bingham II married Minerva Clara Brewster (1834-1903) in Northampton, Massachusetts;
they sailed from Boston two weeks later.
The newlyweds arrived in Honolulu on April 24, 1857,
where they both ministered to the native Hawaiians
as part of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
They eventually traveled and spread Christianity in several Pacific Ocean island communities,
notably at the end of 1857 at the Gilbert Islands.
After a brief return to the United States in 1865, they arrived in Honolulu on March 13, 1867,
for a stopover en route to the Marquesas Islands.
They went through Micronesia and returned to Honolulu again in 1868.
At that time Bingham II was the captain of the ‘’Morning Star’’ ship which they were travelling on.
They settled in Honolulu.
Bingham II was the first to translate the Bible into Gilbertese.
He wrote several hymn books, dictionaries and commentaries in the language of the Gilbert Islands,
as well as other books.
From 1877 to 1880, Bingham II served as Secretary of the Hawaiian Board;
he then served as government protector of South Sea immigrants for two years.
In 1895, Yale University awarded him the Doctorate of Divinity.
Minerva died on 13 November 1903 in Honolulu.
In August 1908, Bingham travelled from Honolulu to the US
to correct proofs of his Commentary of the New Testament in the Gilbertese Language;
he contracted pneumonia and died October 25, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Hiram Bingham I
(1789-1869)
Hiram Bingham I was leader of the 1st group of American Protestant missionaries
to introduce Christianity to the Hawaiian islands.
Like most of the missionaries, he was from New England.
Bingham I and his wife arrived first on the island of Hawaii in 1820,
and sailed on to Honolulu on Oʻahu on April 19.
In 1823, Queen Kaʻahumanu and six high chiefs requested baptism.
Soon after, the Hawaiian government banned prostitution and drunkenness,
which resulted in the shipping industry and the foreign community resenting Bingham's influence.
Bingham I wrote extensively about the natives
and was critical of their land-holding regime and of their "state of civilization".
He supported the introduction of market values along with Christianity:
historians now reference his writings to illustrate the imperial values
that were central to the attitudes of the United States towards Hawaii.
Bingham I became involved in the development of the spelling system for writing the Hawaiian language,
and also translated parts of the Bible into Hawaiian.
Bingham designed the Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu on the Hawaiian Island of Oʻahu.
The building, constructed between 1836 and 1842 in the New England style typical of the Hawaiian missionaries,
is one of the oldest standing Christian places of worship in Hawaiʻi.
Bingham I used his influence with Queen Kaʻahumanu to instigate a strongly anti-Catholic policy in Hawaii,
considerably impeding the work of the French Catholic missionary Alexis Bachelot (1796-1837)
and resulting in decades of persecution of those Hawaiians who converted to Catholicism.
This was motivated by opposition to the spread of French influence in Hawaii
as well as by the religious Protestant-Catholic rivalry and enmity.