Thursday, September 6, 2012

internationalfisheries.jpg

I've talked a lot on this site about finding old artifacts and documents in file cabinets, at flea markets, and at estate sales. But there's a much more romantic, if somewhat clichéd, place to find something: inside a cast-off bottle.

That's the case with the card you see above, which a Scottish fisherman recently found in a bottle that was ensnared in one of his nets. It was cast into the ocean back on June 10, 1914, by a scientist named C. Hunter Brown, who was studying the currents in the North Sea. The idea was that the person who found the bottle could fill out the card and send it back to Brown.

It's all pretty fascinating -- you can read more about it here and here.

I've never sent or found a message in a bottle. Have you? If so, post your stories in the comments and/or send them to me, and I'll follow up on this topic in the future.

(Special thanks to Kirsten Hively for bringing this one to my attention.)

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Slate Update: The next full-length PermaRec article on Slate should run next week. More details soon.

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