We left the Independent State of Samoa, once known as Western Samoa until 1997, yesterday, crossed the international dateline at 10PM last night, and are now in American Samoa.  At one time they were like Hawaii.  Then came the Germans, British and USA.  Around the same time that the U.S. annexed Hawaii in 1898, wars broke out in the greater Samoa islands, and in 1900 those three countries split up the islands.  The result was the U.S. gaining the eastern islands and Germany the western ones, with the UK getting the rights to Tonga and some other sites from Germany. In World War I New Zealand seized control of Upolu from Germany, at the request of Great Britain.  Came the Spanish flu in 1918, killing 20% of the total population, including 30% of all adult men. What remained were 38,000 Samoans and 1500 Europeans. Samoa has two main islands, Upolu and Savaii.  They make up 99% of the 201,000 population,  I made a short visit to the capital city of Apia on Upolu. Samoa is a member of the

    From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):          DAY    USA    WORLD      Brazil      India      South Africa 2020 June     9     1093     4732         1185        246       82 July    22      1205     7128         1293      1120     572 Aug    12      1504     6556        1242        835     130 Sept     9      1208      6222       1136       1168       82 Oct     21      1225      6849         571        703       85 Nov    25       2304    12025        620        518      118 Dec     30       3880    14748       1224       299      465 2021 Jan      14       4142    15512       1151        189     712 Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398 Mar      2       1989     9490        1726       110      194 April     6        906    11787         4211       631       37 May     4        853     13667        3025      3786     59   June    1        287    10637         2346      3205      95  July    7         251      8440        1595        817