The new Guinness World Records oldest message in a bottle has been found. The 108-year-old bottle enclosed a postcard offering the finder a shilling - an old British coin - as a reward money for returning it to the Marine Biological Association (MBA) in the United Kingdom.
Marianne Winkler, a retired German postal employee found the bottle while on a holiday in April 2015. The bottle found its way to the Frisian Islands in the North Sea approximately 108 years, 4 months and 18 days later.
After sending the bottle back to the association, Winkler received - as promised - an old English shilling for her cooperation. But the bottle meant more than just the reward money, which might have been something in 1908.
According to the MBA, the 108-year-old bottle was part of a marine research conducted by George Parker Bidder III, a renowned expert in the field of marine biology in the first part of the 20th Century. Bidder also served as the MBA's president from 1939 to 1945.
"So MBA staff were thrilled when a letter addressed to G. P. Bidder, containing an original postcard from one of his bottles, arrived at the MBA's Plymouth laboratory in April 2015," wrote the UK association on its website.
Prior to the recent discovery, the former world's oldest message in a bottle was 101 years old. A fisherman named Konrad Fischer pulled it from the Baltic Sea off the northern Germany.
According to experts, this former world's oldest concealed a handwritten postcard from a then 20-year-old Richard Platz. Researchers then located Platz's 62-year-old granddaughter, Angela Erdmann.
"It was very surprising. A man stood in front of my door and told me he had post from my grandfather. He then told me that a message in a bottle was found and that the name that was on the card was that of my grandfather," shared Erdmann.
According to the Erdmann, who had never met her grandfather on the maternal side, Platz died at the age of 54 in 1946. The 101-year-old message in a bottle traveled the waters since May 17, 1913.
