In May 2005, three days after eighty-eight migrants were abandoned by human smugglers on a disabled boat, the migrants tied an SOS-bearing bottle to a long line of a passing fishing vessel, whose captain alerted authorities to rescue the migrants. [81] In late 2019, a bottled message launched on August 1, 1994, by 12-year-old Ryan Mead was found near the mouth of the Taramakau River, New Zealand, the find occurring mere months after Mead died at age 37 in a freak accident inhaling fumes while laying carpet. [99] Roots, Fred (14 March 2017). "Why the North Pole matters: An important history of challenges and global fascination". Canadian Geographic. Archived from the original on 6 June 2023. a b c "World record as message in bottle found after 98 years near Shetland". BBC News. August 30, 2012. Archived from the original on December 29, 2015.

a b Hamlyn, Charlotte (March 6, 2018). "Oldest-known message in a bottle found on WA beach 132 years after being tossed overboard". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on March 6, 2018.Stationary time capsules have been termed "messages in a bottle", such as a 1935 message in a lemonade bottle correctly portending difficult times, which was found in 2016 by masons restoring damaged Portland stone at Southampton Guildhall. [112] A geologist left a bottled message in 1959 in a cairn on isolated Ward Hunt Island (Canada, 83°N latitude), allowing its finders in 2013 to determine that a nearby glacier had retreated over 200 feet in the intervening 54 years. [120] More durable examples of time capsules are the Westinghouse Time Capsules of the 1939 and 1964 New York World's Fairs, intended to be opened 5,000 years after their creation. [148] Bottle man lands 50 potential dates". BBC. July 27, 2017. Archived from the original on November 13, 2017.

Flaschenpost der Welt auf Amrum gefunden"[World's oldest message in a bottle found at Amrum]. Norddeutscher Rundfunk (in German). August 19, 2015. Archived from the original on February 4, 2016. Prisoners from the Auschwitz concentration camp concealed bottles containing sketches [149] and writings [116] that were found after World War II. a b c d "Sweet message in a bottle". BBC News. May 18, 1999. Archived from the original on October 30, 2009. • Some references ( example: Commonwealth War Graves Commission) state that Hughes died twelve days later, not two days later as most popularly reported. A message that an American couple released from a cruise ship approaching Hawaii in 1979 was found off Songkhla Beach, Thailand by a former South Vietnamese soldier and his family as they fled that country's communist regime by boat. [77] A correspondence relationship began in 1983, and the couple worked with U.S. Immigration to help the Vietnamese family obtain refugee status in 1985 and move to the U.S. [77]

a b c Wollan, Malia (March 27, 2015). "How to Find a Message in a Bottle". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. In what was described as "perhaps the most famous message in a bottle love story", [78] in March 1999 a green ginger beer bottle was dredged up by a fisherman off the Essex coast, the bottle containing an 84 year old letter tossed into the English channel on September 9, 1914, by British soldier Private Thomas Hughes days before he was killed in fighting in France. [33] Hughes' letter, written for delivery to his wife who had died in 1979, was delivered instead to his then 86-year-old daughter in New Zealand by the fisherman himself, who with his own wife was flown to New Zealand at the expense of New Zealand Post. [33] Last Messages from "L 19" ". Flightglobal. August 17, 1916. p.707. Archived from the original on November 4, 2014. Card in a bottle sparks 70-year-old Army mystery in Japan". Stars and Stripes. June 16, 2017. Archived from the original on September 25, 2017 . Retrieved 2017-12-28. This postcard, inserted into a bottle launched by the Marine Biological Association of the U.K. circa 1906, was found in 2015. [16] 21st century [ edit ]

In 1955, a bottle from a 1903 German Antarctic expedition was found in New Zealand, about 3400 miles from its launch point between the Kerguelen Islands and Tasmania; however, hydrographers surmise it had drifted around the world many times. [70] I saw Mum’s own GP today in the hope that I could put some kind of strategy in place for the future. She duly completed the “purple form” (basically a do not resuscitate document) but had no idea what I was supposed to do with it (she had only ever come across it in relation to nursing homes). In late 2016, a barnacle-encrusted, kelp-tangled GoPro video camera was recovered, the camera's memory card preserving footage showing the prelude to the camera's being swept overboard four years earlier, and also recording its first two hours underwater off Fingal Bay, Australia. [92] Flaschenpost nach 132 Jahren in Australien gefunden (Bottle mail found in Australia after 132 years)". Österreichischer Rundfunk (Radio Austria). March 6, 2018. Archived from the original on March 6, 2018. Includes English-language video.Outside science, people have launched bottled messages to find pen pals, [21] "bottle preachers" [22] have sent "sermon bottles", [23] propaganda-bearing bottles have been directed at foreign shores, [24] [21] [25] [26] and survivors have sent poetic loving tributes to departed loved ones [27] or sent their cremated remains (ashes) on a final journey. [28] [29] a b c d e Quinlan, Ailin (August 5, 2012). "The GI and the Irish colleen". Irish Independent. Archived from the original on August 16, 2016. In December 1928, a trapper working at the mouth of the Agawa River, Ontario, found a bottled note from Alice Bettridge, an assistant stewardess in her early twenties who initially survived the December 1927 sinking in a blizzard of the freighter Kamloops and, before she herself perished, wrote "I am the last one left alive, freezing and starving to death on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. I just want mom and dad to know my fate." [63] Besides interest in citizen science drift-bottle experiments, [31] message-in-a-bottle lore has often been of a romantic or poetic nature. [78] Such messages have been romanticized in literature, from Edgar Allan Poe's 1833 story " MS. Found in a Bottle" through Nicholas Sparks' 1998 Message in a Bottle. [142] Clint Buffington, subject of the 2019 documentary short film The Tides That Bind / A Message in a Bottle Story, [143] surmised in an interview with The Guardian that sending a bottled message expresses a hope to find connection in a fear-filled world. [144] In Newsweek Ryan Bort recounted various historical messages as being cries for help, or "final, poetic words of resignation left behind for (an) indifferent sea", or from "lonely, lovelorn souls, searching for serendipity", or a search for "affirmation ... that comes from somewhere other than yourself". [78] Bort described sending a message in a bottle as a romantic act that has "such a delicious potential for magic" or as "surrendering a part of yourself to something larger", concluding that "every message in a bottle is a prayer". [78]