Have you ever written a message in a bottle and thrown it out to sea? Did you wonder who might find it days, weeks, months or even years later?
No one knows what 20-year-old Richard Platz was hoping when he threw a beer bottle with a postcard inside into the Baltic Sea back in 1913, but a fisherman discovered the object last month on Germany’s Baltic Coast. It is thought to be the oldest message in a bottle in the world.
A genealogical researcher identified Platz as the author by locating his granddaughter Angela Erdmann, who never met her grandfather. So far, the postcard has not been deciphered as most of the ink is illegible from water damage and aging.
Prior to this discovery, the oldest message in a bottle in the Guiness World Records was dated from 1914.
Courtesy of NPR