I went to Hawaii last week. It was great! I had poi and everything.

But! In the spirit of this newsletter, I decided to see how Hawaii and North Carolina might be connected. Turns out a former Honolulu mayor, Peter Carlisle, is a UNC-Chapel Hill grad. Also! The first written record of surfing in North Carolina actually showed up in a Hawaiian newspaper. In 1910, Burke Bridgers of Wrightsville Beach wrote a letter to a writer in Hawaii, asking how to build a surfboard. He and his friends had tried to ride some waves in North Carolina the summer before but had a hard time, because their boards all sucked. Plus, I saw a guy wearing a UNC Greensboro backpack at the Honolulu airport.

That said, the most obvious connection is probably the most tenuous. There is a place named Honolulu, North Carolina. It has no connection to the one in Hawaii. So how did it get its name? Glad you asked:

Last thing: The population of Honolulu (the Hawaiian one) is about 341,000 as of last year. The population of Greensboro is nearly 309,000. My conclusion: HONOLULU IS THE GREENSBORO OF THE PACIFIC. Although! If we’re comparing places solely on the similarity of their populations, Rabbit Hole reader Jon Kimball has that topped: