In April 2014,the world's oldest known message in a bottle was discovered floating in the Baltic Sea. It had spent 101 years lost in the ocean!The message was finally sent to the author's granddaughter. A German fisherman named Konrad Fischer found the brown bottle near Kiel,Germany. He said he nearly threw the bottle back into the water after pulling it out of a fishing net. Then he noticed something inside. The bottle in good condition contained a Danish postcard with two German stamps,dated May 17,1913. Although dampness had made most of the writing illegible ,the readable part of the message asked whoever found it to return it to an address in Berlin. It even contained two stamps to pay for postage. From the address,researchers found that the postcard was written by a man named Richard Platz,who was 20 years old when he wrote the message. While he was hiking on the Baltic coast with a nature appreciation group,he threw the bottle into the sea. Then the researchers began a search for any living relatives of his. Sure enough,they were able to find his 62-year-old granddaughter,Angela Erdmann,who still lives in Berlin. "It was almost unbelievable,"Erdmann said upon being presented with her grandfather's bottle and message."That was a pretty moving moment. Tears rolled down my face." Erdmann never knew her grandfather,who died in 1946,but says that the discovery of the bottle has made her want to learn more about him. The bottle remained on display at the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg until May 1.After that,the researchers examined the postcard and tried to figure out the meaning of the rest of the message. Previously,the oldest message found in a bottle spent nearly 98 years at sea and was discovered in April 2012,according to Guinness World Records. Why did Richard Platz throw the bottle with the message into the sea?
He expected his granddaughter could find the postcard. He wished the finder would send the postcard to his home. He believed his postcard would be kept secret at sea forever. He thought he could make friends with the finder of the bottle.