He never completed his degree course, but was nevertheless appointed to the position of postal inspector (for which a degree was a prerequisite) on the basis of his high examination marks.During the Second World War years he undertook criminal investigations for the postal service before launching his zip-code idea. Five years after his retirement in 1965 Moon was summoned back to revive the zip code, which was falling into disrepute as American businesses paid it only lip service. He met chief executives and company presidents to stress the importance of the code and to win their support, earning himself the sobriquet “Mr Zip”, the same name given to a cartoon postal carrier representing the system.When he retired for a second time, in 1977, Moon threw himself into supporting his local hospital and church and helping to deliver Meals on Wheels.By Tim Bullamore. Helge Marcus Ingstad, writer and historian: born Mer?r, Norway 30 December 1899; married 1941 Anne Stine (died 1997; one daughter); died Oslo 29 March 2001. Helge Marcus Ingstad, writer and historian: born Mer?r, Norway 30 December 1899; married 1941 Anne Stine (died 1997; one daughter); died Oslo 29 March 2001.
Adventurer, researcher and writer, Helge Ingstad was acclaimed in his native Norway as “the last Viking” ­ a man whose life had been lived in the tradition of Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen.It was Ingstad who, together with his wife, Anne Stine Ingstad, located and excavated during the 1960s the remains of a Norse settlement (from about AD 1000) at L’Anse aux Meadows, on the northern tip of Newfoundland, so establishing beyond doubt that the Vikings had reached North America 500 years before Columbus. The grassy mounds which outline the walls of their houses and workshops are today a Unesco World Heritage site ­ and the United States celebrates a National Leif Eriksson Day to honour the son of Erik the Red, the Norse settler of Greenland, whence Leif had travelled south-west to the “Vinland” of the Icelandic sagas.Helge Ingstad was born in 1899 in Mer?r on the west coast of Norway, although his family soon moved to Bergen where he grew up.

With a degree in law, Ingstad opened a practice as a barrister in Levanger, but in 1926, after only a few years, he sold up to become a fur-trapper in Arctic Canada, living amongst the Inuit ­ an experience which gave him the subject matter for his first book, Pelsjegerliv blant Nord-Canadas Indianere, written on his return to Norway and published in 1931, selling more than 100,000 copies. (An English translation, Land of Feast and Famine, followed in 1933.)In 1932, he played a part in Norway’s attempted annexation from Denmark of eastern Greenland, acting as governor of so-called “Erik the Red’s Land” ­ a post for which the medieval title of “sysselman” was revived. After the International Court at the Hague ruled in Denmark’s favour, in April 1933, Ingstad pursued his new career by becoming “sysselman” of the Svalbard Islands, in Spitsbergen, until 1935 (as also again in 1947).Between 1936 and 1938 he studied the Apaches in Arizona and led an expedition into the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico, before spending a period living amongst the Inuit of northern Alaska, in 1949-50. These experiences provided him with the subject matter for further successful books, but then in 1953 he turned his attention to the study of the old Norse settlements in Greenland.Ingstad’s Greenland expedition, together with his wife, whom he had married in 1941, involved a journey of 2,500 nautical miles in a small boat named Benedicte, after their daughter. This resulted in a book, Landet under Leidarstjernen (1959), translated into English as Land under the Polar Star (1966), not long before the appearance of its sequel, Westward to Vinland (1969), first published in Norwegian in 1965. The latter provided a popular account, in advance of a two-volume scientific publication, of the results of an expedition by boat and plane along the coasts of North America which had led him to Newfoundland in 1960. Here a local fisherman, George Decker, showed him some over-grown house-sites at L’Anse aux Meadows.In the face of considerable scholarly scepticism, Ingstad then organised a series of seven archaeological expeditions (1961-68) in order for his wife to undertake their excavation, with the assistance of colleagues drawn from five countries.

Three groups of buildings were identified, similar in form and construction to those in use in Greenland and Iceland during the 10th and 11th centuries. Their occupants smelted and forged iron, unlike the native Americans and Inuit at that period.Confirmation that the occupation of the site dated back to about AD 1000 was provided by radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples, but a clinching discovery was made in 1968 when the expedition uncovered a bronze ring-headed pin (cloak fastener) of late Viking type, closely paralleled by finds from Britain, Ireland, the Faroes and Iceland. The westward trail to Vinland had indeed been shown to have spanned the North Atlantic.There have been further excavations since at L’Anse aux Meadows to complete our picture of this important site and some of the Ingstads’ conclusions about its structures and function have necessarily been modified. No longer, for instance, are there considered to have been any Norse boat-sheds along the shoreline. The elusive “Vinland” of the sagas was most probably not situated in Newfoundland, as Ingstad himself believed, but further to the south so that the settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows would have served as a way-station where boats were repaired and revictualled ­ the “Gateway to Vinland” rather than “Vinland” proper. The fact remains, however, that the world owes the recognition of this site to the husband and wife team of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad ­ no longer may the story of Viking settlement in North America be regarded as legendary.A monument to the Ingstads was unveiled by King Harald outside the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo earlier this year, but honours had properly come Helge Ingstad’s way long before.