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
1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti the transit. The viewing of the 1761 transit involved the effort of 120 observers from nine nations. Thomas Hornsby reported the observations as unsuccessful primarily due to poor weather conditions. He alerted the Royal Society in 1766 that preparations needed to begin for the 1769 transit. Hornsby's publication in the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" in 1766 focused attention on the "cone of visibility" indicating, like Halley, some of the better places to observe the transit. The Royal Society boasted that the British "were inferior to no nation on earth, ancient or modern" and were eager to make another