The world's oldest message in a bottle has been found and returned containing a reward and the world's oldest known message.
Photo: Marine Biological Association
A 108-year-old postcard offering a shilling in exchange for its return to an English marine research institute is now officially the world’s oldest message in a bottle after being recovered in Germany.
The Plymouth Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association (MBA), which received the card, said this week that the bottle had smashed the old record of 99 years and 43 days in the Guinness World Records.
It was discovered by retired German postal worker Marianne Winkler while on vacation on Germany’s North Frisian islands, 108 years and 138 days after it was thrown into the North Sea off the English coast by the distinguished marine biologist George Parker Bidder on Nov. 30, 1906.
Winkler followed the message inside — “Break the bottle” — and found a postcard inside asking to be returned to the MBA in Plymouth, on England’s south coast.
“The postcard asked the finder to fill out information about where the bottle was found,” said Guy Baker of the MBA. When Winkler wrote a letter addressed to Bidder, “Our receptionist was somewhat confused.”
Bidder released 1,020 bottles between 1904 and 1906.
He found that many bottles that sank to the bottom of the southern North Sea washed up in England, while floating bottles moved toward mainland Europe. From this, he deduced for the first time that the North Sea’s deep sea current flowed from east to west.
The MBA is still a renowned research institution.
Honouring its promise, the MBA forwarded a thank-you letter and an old shilling piece to Winkler.
AFP