COOK ISLANDS

COOK ISLANDS / KŪKI 'ĀIRANI.

Definitive stamps.
Map of the Harvey Islands (Manuae), portrait of James Cook and bird.
Second stamp in a set of 10, issued on 01.08.1949.
Face value: 1 New Zealand penny.
Printing: Recess.
Print: 716,880 copies.

Catalogs
- Michel No. 79.
- Scott No. 132.
- StampWorld No. 91.
- Stanley Gibbons No. 151.
- Yvert et Tellier No. 77.

The Cook Islands (in Māori, Kūki 'Āirani) are a self-governing island country in the South Pacific Ocean in free association with New Zealand. It comprises 15 islands whose total land area is 240 km² (93 sq mi). The Cook Islands' exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers 1,960,027 km² (756,771 sq mi) of ocean. The first European contact with the islands took place in 1595 when the Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña sighted the island of Pukapuka, which he named San Bernardo. Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, a Portuguese captain at the service of the Spanish Crown, made the first European landing in the islands when he set foot on Rakahanga in 1606, calling the island Gente Hermosa (“Beautiful People”). The British navigator James Cook arrived in 1773 and again in 1777 giving the island of Manuae the name Hervey Island.

Manuae (the current denomination of the Hervey Islands) is an uninhabited atoll in the southern group of the Cook Islands. It is administratively part of Aitutaki. It comprises two horseshoe-shaped islets, Manuae to the west and Te Au O Tu to the east, with a total area of 6 km² (2.32 sq mi) on either side of a lagoon about 7 km x 4 km (4.35 x 2.48 mi). The atoll is a marine park and is an important breeding ground for seabirds and marine turtles in the Central Pacific. James Cook sighted Manuae on September 23, 1773, the first of the Cook Islands he voyaged to. Initially he named it Sandwich Island but changed it to Hervey Island in honor of Augustus Hervey.

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Thanks to Dragan Buškulić for his contribution (https://worldofstamp2.wordpress.com/).