Retired postal worker has found the oldest message in a bottle to ever be discovered to this day. It dates back 108 years and it was written on a postcard.
The “artifact” was found in Germany this past April, and the event did not lack irony as Marianne Winkler, a former postal worker, is the person who made the discovery while enjoying her vacation. She and her husband smashed the glass as soon as they realized what type of bottle they had stumbled upon
The message is only one of the 1020 messages that George Parker Bidder threw into the North Sea between the years of 1904 and 1906. On the postcard he promised that he’d offer a shilling to the person who found it and returned to United Kingdom’s Marine Biological Association (MBA).
And it turns out that a promise is still a promise even after 108 years. Marianne Winkler and her husband were indeed rewarded the old English shilling promised in the message after sending the postcard to its rightful recipients.
The UK’s Marine Biological Association also gave a statement informing that the messages sent by George Parker Bidder all those years ago had the goal of testing the North Sea’s ocean currents and serves as a rare finding these days. He was the president of the association between the years of 1939 and 1945.
The finding also has additional importance on top of the historical value. It’s the first to prove that the ocean currents in the North Sea flow from the eats to the west.
Image Source: pixabay.com
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