BERLIN: A message in a bottle thrown into the sea 108 years ago by British scientists has been discovered in Germany.
The bottle was released into the sea by George Parker Bidder in the early 1900s. A German lady Marianne Winkler who was spending the day at a beach on the North Sea has found a message in a bottle that’s at least 108 years old. Possibly the oldest ever found.
She took it home to her husband, Horst Winkler, for further inspection, and that’s when they noticed the message, “Break the Bottle. Inside they found a postcard with no date but a return address listing the British Marine Biological Association. The message, written in German, Dutch, and English, promised a reward of one shilling to the person who returned it.
According to the MBA, Bidder released approximately 1,020 bottles between 1904 and 1906 as part of an experiment to understand currents. The bottles were designed to float above the sea bed so they could be carried by the deep sea currents. And thanks to those bottles, Bidder proved for the very first time that the currents flowed from east to west in the North Sea, valuable information for local fishermen.
