A message in bottle that floated for 100 years at sea was found and returned to its intended address this week.
The Associated Press reported that the bottle was tossed into the North Sea east of the U.K. sometime between 1904 and 1906 by researcher George Parker Bidder, who went on to become the president of the country's Marine Biological Association.
The bottle was one of roughly 1,000 he released to study the ocean currents more than a half-century before rock band The Police released their megahit single "Message in a Bottle" in 1979.
It washed up on the German island of Amrum in April, and was picked up by a beachgoing couple.
In the bottle they found a postcard asking to be returned to the association. It promised a "one shilling reward" for doing so.
"We were very excited," Guy Baker, a spokesman for the group, said Friday after receiving the missive. "We certainly weren't expecting to receive any more of the postcards."
Baker said most of the bottles were recovered decades ago by fishermen, and that they are now asking the Guinness Book of Records to recognize the message in a bottle as the oldest ever found. The current record holder was found in 2013, 99 years after it was released — also for a scientific experiment.
Baker said an old shilling has in fact been sent back to the couple who returned the postcard from the bottle.
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