To prove ancient sailors could have done it, one man rafted 4,300 miles across the Pacific

In 1947, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and five companions sailed a balsa-log raft named Kon-Tiki from Peru to test his theory that South Americans could have settled Polynesia by drifting on ocean currents. With only a radio as modern equipment, they spent 101 days at sea before smashing into a reef in the Tuamotu Islands. Most anthropologists now think Polynesia was actually settled from Asia, but the voyage proved the crossing was at least physically possible.

— Thor Heyerdahl, The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas — 1948 (English translation, 1950)
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