a man pushing a large block of ice in the back of a truck

The Ice Block Expedition of 1959 In the autumn of 1959, a 3-ton block of ice made an 8,500 kilometer journey on the back of a pickup truck from the edge of the Arctic Circle to the Equator in central Africa. The journey which took four weeks to complete involved driving through the vast desert of the Sahara in fifty degree heat. During this entire time no refrigeration was used. The trip was a publicity stunt organized by a Norwegian company called Glassvatt, that manufactured insulating glass wool, to show how good their product was. The idea for the ice block expedition was sown the previous autumn by Radio Luxembourg when they challenged anyone to transport three tons of ice from the Arctic Circle to the Equator. The condition was that no form of refrigeration should be used. Confident that no one would be able to pull this off, the station announced a reward of 100,000 francs for each kilogram that remained at the destination. This was equivalent to about $17,000 per kg in 2019 currency, which was a lot