Knut Magne Haugland | Kon-Tiki crewman, 92
Knut Magne Haugland, 92, the last of six crew members who crossed the Pacific Ocean aboard the balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, died Friday in a hospital in Oslo, Norway, Kon-Tiki Museum director Maja Bauge said.
Knut Magne Haugland, 92, the last of six crew members who crossed the Pacific Ocean aboard the balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, died Friday in a hospital in Oslo, Norway, Kon-Tiki Museum director Maja Bauge said.
The former Norwegian resistance fighter and explorer, who was decorated by the British in World War II for helping prevent the German nuclear program from getting heavy water to make weapons, joined Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl's expedition in 1947 as a radio operator.
The Kon-Tiki team sailed the raft with basic equipment 4,900 miles from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days to prove Heyerdahl's theory that ancient mariners might have migrated across ocean stretches. - AP