Random Mysterious Messages Found In Bottles (14 items)

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  (#1) A Message That Saved A Family's Lives

  Curtis Whitson, his 13-year-old son, and his girlfriend, Krystal Ramirez, went backpacking at the Arroyo Seco River in California for Father's Day weekend in 2019. Though Whitson is familiar with the Central California coast forest, and takes as many as 20 backpacking trips there every year, he didn't expect to find himself trapped between 40-foot rocks and a strong water current. 

  Whitson and his crew planned to float down the river to their campground, but the currents made the river impassable, and the rope previously in place to help hikers out of such a situation was gone. Once they realized they were stuck, the group used the paper they had on hand to write a message that read, "We are stuck here at the waterfall. Get help please," and the date, June 15, 2019. 

  They placed the message in a green water bottle, scratched "HELP" into the side, and tossed it over the waterfall. Two unidentified hikers found the message, and the California Highway Patrol rescued the three stranded hikers the following day. 

  Whitson and Ramirez are looking to identify the hikers who found their message to thank them for saving their lives. 
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  (#13) The Professional

  Harold Hackett, a resident of Prince Edward Island in Canada, had a lifelong interest in the mystery of messages floating in bottles. In 1996, the amateur fisherman decided to try sending such bottles out to sea and wait for the results. To increase his chances of having even one bottle retrieved by someone, he sent more than 4,800 bottles - complete with messages - into the sea.

  Over the years, he has received more than 3,000 responses from the delighted people who found them.
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  (#2) A Haunting Message From The Titanic

  Many people have undoubtedly wondered over the years if any of the Titanic passengers had the time and presence of mind to write a note, find a bottle, and toss it into the Atlantic as the great ship was sinking. Well, it turns out someone did.

  A young Irishman named Jeremiah Burke was traveling with a cousin to join their family in Boston. He was off to start a new life and was excited about the possibilities. So, when the Titanic began to sink and Burke realized he would perish, he managed to write out a note. Before his departure from Ireland, his mother had given him a small bottle of holy water. In his last moments, Burke put his note into the bottle and cast it into the sea. His note read:

  "From Titanic, goodbye all, Burke of Glanmire, Cork."

  Sadly, both Burke and his cousin perished in the sinking and his poignant message washed ashore in the bottle a year later, just a few miles from his home.
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  (#9) The Oldest Survivor

  More than 100 years ago, navigators and nautical chart makers used "float bottles" to learn more about the currents and tides in different bodies of water. In 1914, the Glasgow School of Navigation in Scotland cast more than 1,889 bottles into the sea. Each of the bottles contained a printed card with instructions describing how to report the bottle back to the navigation school.

  Fast forward to 2011 when a Scottish fisherman finally found one of the bottles while pulling in his fishing nets. To date, it is the oldest message in a bottle found in the modern era, and is recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.

  Over the years, more than 300 of the project's nearly 2,000 bottles have washed ashore.
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  (#6) The Oldest Message In A Bottle From German Ship Called Paula

  In 2018, an Australian woman discovered the oldest known message in a bottle on sand dunes in Australia. Tonya Illman discovered a bottle while walking along the beach and picked it up, thinking it would be an attractive decoration to place on her bookshelf. To her surprise, her son's girlfriend noticed a rolled up piece of paper secured with a small piece of string inside the bottle. After letting the bottle and note dry out, Illman and her family found unrolled the note to find handwriting in German it that included information about the location and route of a ship called the Paula. 

  At first, Illman assumed the message was a hoax. However, Illman's husband did some research online. The message included a date, which corresponded with an ongoing program conducted in Germany from 1864 to 1963. Captains would routinely throw bottles in the sea and write down the name of the ship, the date, the precise coordinates, and the travel route. Given the message included this information, the family took the bottle to a maritime museum where a curator determined the message was authentic and had indeed been released as part of the program. 

  The message in the bottle was roughly 132 years old. This makes it the oldest known message in a bottle, surpassing the previous record of 108 years. 
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  (#4) Heartbreaking Auschwitz Message In A Bottle

  Not everyone who feels the need to cast a message off into the universe in a bottle has a body of water available to them. There are some bottles with messages found not only on seashores, but on land. Such was the case in a hauntingly sad story from Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp.

  This bottle, which was discovered in 2009 by construction workers near the camp, held a message dated September 9, 1944. On that day long ago, a desperate camp inmate recorded the names, camp assigned numbers, and hometowns of seven male Auschwitz prisoners.

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