g squad in October 1945.
1945 Oct 24, Vidkun Quisling,
Norway's wartime minister president, was executed by firing squad
for collaboration with the Nazis.
1946 Scandinavian airlines
began as a co-operative venture between the airlines of Denmark,
Norway and Sweden. In 1951 they merged. Marcus Wallenberg Jr.
(1899-1982), tennis champion, sold out of railways to concentrate on
airplanes. Wallenberg helped to establish the Scandinavian Airlines
System and controlled companies that employed one of every eight
10/14/06, p.73)(Econ, 5/19/12, p.74)
1946-1953 Trygve Lie of Norway served as the
Secretary-General of the UN.
(SFC, 12/14/96, p.A1)
1947 Apr 28, Norwegian
anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl (d.2002) and five others sailed from
Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day, 4,300
nautical mile journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia. They
wanted to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in
Polynesia. Heyerdahl published "Kon-Tiki" in 1950.
(AP, 4/28/97)(WSJ, 5/22/97, p.A13)(HN,
4/28/99)(SFC, 4/19/02, p.A2)
1947 "Kon Tiki" by Thor
Heyerdahl of Norway was published by Rand McNally.
(SSFC, 11/18/01, p.A28)
1949 Apr 4, The (NATO) North
Atlantic Treaty Organization pact was signed by the US, Great
Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy,
Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Canada. It provided for
mutual defense against aggression and for close military
1952 Feb 19, Knut Hamsun
(b.1859), Norwegian writer, died. He won the Nobel Prize in
literature in 1920. His work included "From the Cultural Life in
Modern America" (1889), "Hunger," "The Growth of the Soil,"
"Victoria," and "An Overgrown Path." A film portrait of his life was
produced in 1997. In 2009 Ingar Sletten Kolloen authored “Knut
Hamsun: Dreamer and Dissenter."
(SFEC, 4/20/97, DB p.47-49)(Econ, 11/7/09, p.79)
1952 Dec 11, The outbound
Norwegian ship Fernstream was sliced open by the inbound SS Hawaiian
Rancher under heavy fog inside the Golden Gate. The Fernstream sank
in 30 minutes but all passengers escaped.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1957 Sep 21, Norway's King
Haakon VII died in Oslo at age 85.
1959 Nov 20, Seven European
nations (Austria, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden,
Switzerland) signed the Stockholm Convention to form the European
Free Trade Association (EFTA). The organization becoming operative
on May 3 1960.
1959 Norway’s Stolt-Nielsen
shipping group was founded and grew to become one of the biggest
players in Norway's large shipping industry.
1967 May 11, The United Kingdom
re-applied to join the European Community. It is followed by Ireland
and Denmark and, a little later, by Norway. General de Gaulle is
still reluctant to accept British accession.
1968 In San Francisco Mayor
Alioto greeted King Olav V of Norway with a grand reception at City
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.A10)
1969 May 25, Thor Heyerdahl
(1914-2002), Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer, departed with
his crew on the reed raft Ra for from Morocco. They abandoned their
trip 1 week shy of Barbados. Heyerdahl sailed across the Atlantic in
his Egyptian reed boat, Ra, and reported on garbage floating
everywhere in the sea. On 16 July the crew was saved by the American
yacht Shenandoah. In just 56 days they had sailed a distance of
2,700 nautical miles.
1969 Oct 12, Sonja Henie
(b.1912), Norwegian ice skater (Olympic-gold-1928,32,36) and
film star, died of leukemia on a flight from Paris to Oslo. Henie's
career included a record 10 consecutive world championships.
(SSFC, 10/5/03, Par
1969 Oct, Economists Jan
Timbergen (1903-1994) of the Netherlands and Ragnar Frisch of Norway
were awarded the first Nobel Prize in Economics for having developed
and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes.
Tinbergen was a founding trustee of Economists for Peace and
1970 May 17, Thor Heyerdahl
(1914-2002), Norwegian anthropologist, left Morocco aboard Ra II, a
papyrus reed boat, and sailed 3,270 nautical miles across the
Atlantic to Barbados in 57 days [see Jul 12].
1970 Jul 12, Thor Heyerdahl,
Norwegian ethnographer, crossed the Atlantic Ocean in