In the spring of 1947 six men embarked on an expedition with all odds against them. Their vessel had never been tested, and it had several potentially dangerous flaws and weaknesses.

The story of Kon-Tiki began 11 years before the raft was launched. In 1937-38 Thor Heyerdahl and his wife Liv spent a year on the island of Fatu Hiva in the Pacific Ocean.

One night Liv remarked that the ocean waves always struck the eastern shore of the island. This caught Thor’s attention.

One of the oldest inhabitants on the island had once told him that his own ancestor, Tiki, had come to Fatu Hiva from a large country beyond the sea.

Thor had also noticed that the stone statues on the island had a remarkable similarity to statues found in South America.

Could science be wrong? Was it possible that the eastern islands in the Pacific were inhabited by people coming from the East and not the West?

In the spring of 1946 Thor Heyerdahl traveled to New York to present the radical theory he had called Polynesia and America.

He had spent ten years writing this thesis, and found what he regarded as conclusive evidence in the South American myth of Con-Tiki Viracocha, a pre-Incan Indian chief who had lived in Peru, been driven off after losing a battle and escaped into the setting sun on a raft made of balsa-wood.

Thor met massive opposition. No one would take him seriously—they would not even read the thesis.

To prove that it was possible to drift with the Humboldt Current from South America to Polynesia on a raft made of balsa-wood, he would have to do it himself.

It had been centuries since the previous large and ocean-going balsa wood raft had been built in Peru.

A constant stream of curious people showed up to watch the raft take shape, and they all had the same conclusion: The raft was a deathtrap.

The 28th of April 1947, a raft with six men and one parrot onboard was towed out from the mainland. They were then left alone at the mercy of an unbroken horizon.

The learning curve was extremely steep. No one on board knew anything about steering a large balsa wood raft.

Self acclaimed experts, from Norwegian captains to British sailors, had been certain that the ropes holding the raft together would last for only 14 days - if that.

Fourteen days came - and went. The ropes held together. After several weeks they found out why. The ropes had carved grooves in the soft balsa wood, thus protecting them from the wear and tear of friction.

On the 21st of July the wind suddenly disappeared, and the air became heavy and sticky. Then all hell broke loose. The wind was raging, the sea turned into a froth of white.

Raaby’s sleeping bag came out of the hut. Like a shot from a cannon, Watzinger reached down to take it, lost his footing and disappeared.

Watzinger started to crawl desperately toward the raft. It was obvious that he would not make it.

Knut´s extreme resourcefulness kicked in. With a life vest in one hand and a rope in the other, he dived into the ocean and started swimming towards Herman. As luck would have it they actually met, and were hauled on board, totally exhausted.

The seventh crew was the South American parrot Lorita. After 60 days at the raft some high sea came in and Lorita disappeard forever.

They could see schools of several thousands of tuna fish, more than a hundred sharks at the same time and flocks of whales. There were flying fish and bonito.

One day the creature that has become the very symbol of the expedition came calling.

All of a sudden a 15-meter long sea monster appeared behind the raft, and now it was just lying there observing them, with its' immense head just inches away.

It was a whale shark, the largest fish in the world.

It made no signs of attacking, but no signs of wanting to leave either.

After a while this became more than Erik Hesselberg could handle, and as the shark passed just beneath the raft, he grabbed a harpoon driving it into the fish’s head.

They expected the monster to return, enraged, but they never saw it again.

At the end of July the first birds started to appear, and on the 30th they saw land for the first time.

The next couple of days came and went; several islands appeared and disappeared in the horizon.

Inhabitants from the islands came out in canoes, but even with their help the crew could not steer Kon-Tiki towards any of the islands

After 100 days they saw the coral reef of Raroia. This time it was different - they would not manage to steer the raft past it. The next morning, small tropical islands lay like pearls on a string behind the reef, but they were impossible to reach without passing the razor-sharp spikes on the reef.

The last thing that happened was that they had contact with a radio amateur in Roratonga. If he did not hear from them in the next 36 hours, he should contact the norwegian embassy in Washington.

On the 7th of August, Kon-Tiki struck the reef with an ear-shattering crash. They were tossed everywhere, instantly turning the raft into a huge pile of timber. Every crewmember had to fight the immense powers in the ocean by himself. They all made it ashore – every valuable piece of equipment salvaged.

A tropical island is everyone's paradise, but after 101 days on a raft, it must have been a slice of heaven.

After letting the world know they had reached land safe and sound, they got one week to themselves. Then they were discovered by the inhabitants on a small island close by.

A ship brought both the men and the raft to Tahiti, where they received a hero’s welcome. After that, they went to Washington, where they met an enthusiastic President Harry Truman in the White House.

The crew had no way of knowing it, but the radio messages Haugland and Raaby sent out had been followed with fascination by the whole world.

Today you can see the Kon-Tiki raft at the Kon-Tiki museum in Oslo.