It is one of the great adventure stories of all time. A man named Thor Heyerdahl wanted to test the theory that people from South America could have settled the Polynesian Islands in the South Pacific long before Columbus sailed to the New World.

So Heyerdahl took a small team of men to Peru, where they constructed a raft out of balsa logs. These logs were tied together with rope much as a group of sailors might have done in earlier, less sophisticated times. Heyerdahl named the raft the Kon-Tiki. He and his crew of five set out on the Pacific from the coast of Peru on April 28, 1947. They sailed the raft over 4,300 miles across the Pacific Ocean before smashing into a reef in Polynesia 101 days later. They had accomplished their goal. Heyerdahl wrote a best-selling book about their adven…