The message in a bottle was discovered on the beach at Wedge Island, Australia.
KymIllman.com
By MERRIT KENNEDY | NPR – the two-way
In 1886, sailors on a German barque called Paula tossed a gin bottle with a message inside into waters hundreds of miles off the western coast of Australia.
One hundred and thirty-one years later, a Perth resident stumbled upon the bottle on Australia’s Wedge Island.
It’s believed to be the oldest-known message in a bottle, in terms of the amount of time that has passed between when it was written and when it was found. Before this discovery, Guinness World Records said that the oldest was 108 years old, found in Germany in 2015.
Australian, German and Dutch researchers worked together to verify the note’s authenticity, according to a report from the Western Australia Museum.
Tonya Illman was walking on a sand dune in January when she spotted the old bottle. “I picked it up thinking it might look nice on display in my home,” Illman says, according to an account on her husband’s website.
The bottle had no closure and was partially filled with damp sand. Shortly after, Illman’s son’s girlfriend tipped out the contents and found a tightly rolled note covered in a piece of string.