Good morning, Whitewater.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with an even chance of afternoon thundershowers, and a high of seventy-five. Sunrise is 5:53 and sunset 8:07, for 14h 14m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 45.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1947, an expedition in a wooden raft ends successfully:
On this day in 1947, Kon-Tiki, a balsa wood raft captained by Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl, completes a 4,300-mile, 101-day journey from Peru to Raroia in the Tuamotu Archipelago, near Tahiti.Heyerdahl wanted to prove his theory that prehistoric South Americans could have colonized the Polynesian islands by drifting on ocean currents.
Heyerdahl and his five-person crew set sail from Callao, Peru, on the 40-square-foot Kon-Tiki on April 28, 1947. The Kon-Tiki, named for a mythical white chieftain, was made of indigenous materials and designed to resemble rafts of early South American Indians. While crossing the Pacific, the sailors encountered storms, sharks and whales, before finally washing ashore at Raroia. Heyerdahl, born in Larvik, Norway, on October 6, 1914, believed that Polynesia’s earliest inhabitants had come from South America, a theory that conflicted with popular scholarly opinion that the original settlers arrived from Asia. Even after his successful voyage, anthropologists and historians continued to discredit Heyerdahl’s belief. However, his journey captivated the public and he wrote a book about the experience that became an international bestseller and was translated into 65 languages. Heyerdahl also produced a documentary about the trip that won an Academy Award in 1951.
A Google a Day asks a history question:
What was the charge of the 1807 indictment by the man who was chosen as Vice President on February 17, 1801, by the House of Representatives after thirty-six ballots?