Surfing Guinness Book of World Records recognized a wave ride by Garrett McNamara at Nazaré, Portugal as the largest wave ever surfed. For hundreds of years, surfing was a central part of ancient Polynesian culture. Surfing may have first been observed by British explorers at Tahiti in 1767. Samuel Wallis and the crew members of who were the first Britons to visit the island in June of that year. Another candidate is the botanist Joseph Banks being part of the first voyage of James Cook on , who arrived on Tahiti on 10 April 1769. Lieutenant James King was the first
George Anson (British Army officer, born 1769) George Anson (British Army officer, born 1769) General Sir George Anson, GCB (1769 – 4 November 1849), was a British officer and politician from the Anson family. He commanded a British cavalry brigade under the Duke of Wellington during the Peninsular War and sat for many years as a Whig Member of Parliament. Anson was the second son of George Anson (previously Adams) and his wife The Hon. Mary Vernon, daughter of the first Lord Vernon. He had an elder brother, Thomas Anson, 1st Viscount Anson, and a younger brother, Sir William Anson, 1st Baronet; another younger brother was Frederick