A woman who found a message in a bottle at the beach last April has just been bestowed the honor of becoming a world record holder.
That bottle and message she found just so happened to be the oldest bottle message ever found, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Marianne Winkler was on a vacation at the German Amrum Island last April when she stumbled upon the item. She saw there was a message telling the holder to break the bottle. She did not want to break the bottle to retrieve the contents, but ultimately was forced to do so.
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The Independent showcased the bottle in an Apr. 20 Twitter post:
This is the oldest message in a bottle in the world https://t.co/d5c21nqsG5 pic.twitter.com/AwPb7E4wGU
— The Independent (@Independent) April 20, 2016
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And inside, Winkler saw a postcard written in English, German and Dutch. The writer asked the recipient to return the bottle to the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, Devon, and promised a return reward of a shilling.
According to The U.K. Telegraph, that bottle was part of an experiment to prove that the deep sea current in the North Sea flowed from east to west.
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The bottle that Winkler found was actually one of 1,020 that were released into the into the North Sea by George Parker Bidder, a former president of The Marine Biological Association, between 1904 and 1906. The bottle that Winkler found spent 108 years and 138 days at sea.
The Guinness Book of World Records noted that this was a record breaking discovery. The previous record had been held by a bottle that was found in Shetland in 2013 after spending 99 years and 43 days at sea.
Unfortunately, Bidder was not around to see what was likely the final bottle of his experiment returned, as he died in 1954 at the age of 91.
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