iStockphoto
You never know what you’re going to find in the sand when you head to the beach, and a woman in New Jersey recently stumbled across a message in a bottle that may have set a world record after washing up on the shore close to 150 years after it was tossed into the ocean.
The Greek philosopher Theophrastus (a student of Aristotle) is widely credited with inventing the concept of a message in a bottle when he purportedly used that method to test out his theory that the Mediterranean Sea flows into the Atlantic Ocean all the way back in 310 B.C. (although there’s no concrete proof that was actually the case).
That particular method was also harnessed by a number of people (including Benjamin Franklin) attempting to understand how oceanic currents flow prior to the advent of technology that made it a bit easier to unlock those mysteries, and there have been a handful of cases where people stranded at sea have been rescued thanks to a message in a bottle containing a call for help.
However, the motivations for sending a message in a bottle don’t have to be particularly ambitious, as there are plenty of people who’ve dropped a message into the ocean due to the simple intrigue that comes with not knowing where it will ultimately end up.
According to WABC, that appeared to be the case with whoever was responsible for tossing a message in a bottle off of a yacht in the waters off of Atlantic City, New Jersey on August 6, 1876.
The outlet reports Amy Smyth Murphy was taking an early morning stroll on the beach in Corson’s Inlet State Park in Ocean City (around 10 miles south of the gambling haven) when she came across a corked glass bottle bearing the name of a company in Philadelphia.
Smyth Murphy picked up the bottle to kickstart a saga she documented on TikTok, as she eventually opened it up to discover a business card for W.G.&J. Klemm Gents’ Furnishing Goods in the City of Brotherly Love along with a message that suggested it was dropped from a boat called “The Neptune” in Atlantic City 148 years prior to its discovery.
The message in a bottle—which one expert said was likely recently dislodged from the floor of the ocean due to a beach replenishment project—appears to be in contention for a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records, as one that was discovered in 2018 was “only” 131 years old.