Short answers, pulled from the story.
The history of Oceania includes the history of Australia, Easter Island, Fiji, Hawaii, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Western New Guinea, and other Pacific island nations. The region was settled across a vast range of time, from around 70,000 years ago in Near Oceania to roughly 3,000 years ago in Remote Oceania.
Indigenous Australians migrated from Africa to Asia around 70,000 years ago and arrived in Australia around 50,000 years ago. The first settlers of Australia, New Guinea, and the large islands to the east arrived between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago, when Neanderthals still roamed Europe.
Nan Madol is a megalithic complex made from basalt lava logs on Pohnpei in Micronesia, with construction beginning as early as 1200 CE. Built as a series of small artificial islands linked by canals, it is often called the Venice of the Pacific and served as the seat of the Saudeleur dynasty that united Pohnpei's estimated 25,000 people.
Portuguese navigators reached islands of Oceania between 1512 and 1526, and Ferdinand Magellan entered and named the Pacific on the 28th of November 1520. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first known European to reach Tasmania and New Zealand, sighting Tasmania on the 24th of November 1642.
James Cook was killed at Kealakekua Bay on the 14th of February 1779 after Hawaiians took one of his small boats and he attempted to take King Kalani'opu'u hostage. He was struck on the head and stabbed to death as he fell in the surf, and the Hawaiians later prepared his body with funerary rituals reserved for chiefs.
From 1946 to 1958, the Marshall Islands served as the Pacific Proving Grounds for the United States, the site of 67 nuclear tests, including the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed Mike, at Enewetak atoll on the 1st of November 1952. The United Kingdom tested at Maralinga in South Australia and France tested at Moruroa atoll, conducting its last test on the 27th of January 1996.
Samoa became the first Pacific nation to gain independence in 1962, followed by Nauru in 1968, and Fiji and Tonga in 1970, with numerous other nations following in the 1970s and 1980s. Australia and New Zealand adopted the Statute of Westminster in 1942 and 1947, and Hawaii became a U.S. state in 1959.