World's Oldest Message in a Bottle Discovered

A 108-year-old postcard offering a shilling in exchange for its return to an English marine research institute is now officially the world's oldest message in a bottle after being recovered in Germany.

The Plymouth Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association (MBA), which received the card, said this week that the bottle had smashed the old record of 99 years and 43 days in the Guinness World Records.

It was discovered by retired German postal worker Marianne Winkler while on holiday on Germany's North Frisian islands, 108 years and 138 days after it was thrown into the North Sea off the English coast by distinguished marine biologist George Parker Bidder on November 30, 1906.

Winkler followed the message inside reading "break the bottle", and found a postcard inside asking to be returned to the MBA in Plymouth, on England's south coast.