Many people have written a note, stuck it inside an old bottle and set it on a journey at sea. Sometimes those are never found, who knows where they end up, but on occasion they are found, read and shared with the world. Especially if they happen to be 98 year old messages.

Most fisherman look for a big catch that will get them in the record books. A fisherman, Andrew Leaper, in Scotland recently found a message in a bottle and that is what made it into the record books not his fish. Leaper found the bottle east of the Shetland Islands, just off of Scotland’s northern shore.

The letter in the bottle was written in 1914, making it 98 years old. It broke a Guinness World Record by 5 years.

So what was written on a note from 98 years ago? Simply it was a postcard asking for information from the International Fishery Investigation. The postcard asked for information about when and where the card was found. It was to be filled out, placed in the mail and sent back to the IFI. They were searching for information about the direction of the deep currents of the North Sea.

There were 1890 bottles released in 1914 asking for the same information.

Can you imagine the journey that bottle has been on; at sea for 98 years. The stories it could tell.

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