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
John McLeod (explorer) continent, the forty-seven-year-old McLeod retired from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1842 and returned to Great Britain, where the subsequent course of his life is unknown. Mount McLeod, west of Dease Lake, British Columbia, is named for him. John McLeod (explorer) John McLeod (1795 – after 1842) was a Scottish-born explorer of Canada, in his capacity as a fur trader with the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company. He is remembered primarily for his explorations of several major rivers of the southwestern Northwest Territories, southern Yukon Territory, and northern British Columbia. McLeod arrived in Montreal, headquarters of the North