Have you ever told your students the story behind these messages that for decades travel the world in a fragile glass bottle, pushed by capricious and unpredictable ocean currents ? Messages in a bottle They have been the subject of countless stories, some romantic and others shipwrecks. From secrets of love to calls for help, the sailing bottles are quite an enigma even in these times. Recently, a Scottish fisherman named Andrew Leaper found, in the Shetland Islands, a message in a bottle thrown into the sea 98 years ago, in 1914. Until now, it is the oldest bottle found, according to the Guinness Book of Record .
Since ancient times, sealed bottles have been used to determine the behavior of sea currents. In the year 310 BC, the Greek philosopher Theophrastus he threw bottles into the sea to show that the Mediterranean Sea was formed by currents from the Atlantic Ocean. In the late 18th century, Chunosuke Matsuyama, a Japanese treasure hunter , was shipwrecked on an island in the South Pacific. He carved a message on a piece of wood and set it adrift. It was found in 1935 in the Japanese village where Matsuyama was born. Today, drift bottles are still used by oceanographers studying global currents.
See this link for more fascinating stories about messages in a bottle (click here)