The Oldest Confirmed 'Message in a Bottle' Contained Some Fascinating Questions
26 JULY 2021
In 2018, a message in a bottle dating back to 1886 - 132 years ago - was found half-buried in the sand of a Western Australian beach.
According to its contents, it spent more than a century swimming around, before it was discovered nearly 950 kilometres (590 miles) from where it was thrown off a ship in the Indian Ocean.
Beachgoer Tonya Illman found the old gin bottle with a rolled-up message in January 2018, 50 meters (164 feet) from the shoreline at the high water mark on Wedge Island.
Even though it was missing a cork, surprisingly both the bottle and its contents were largely unscathed.