14 DAY TRIAL // Three German fishermen had a big surprise last week when they found a record-breaking 101-year-old message in a bottle in their nets.
Konrad Fischer, Klaus Matthiesen and Thomas Buick were fishing off the coast of Kiel when they came across the discovery. When they pulled their nets out of the water, they noticed something unusual among the fish – an old beer bottle stuffed with a note.
It was a postcard from Denmark with two German stamps on it, written by a Berlin man called Richard Platz. He scribbled the note on May 17, 1913, one year before the First World War, in which he died.
The postcard was accompanied by a message asking the finder to send it on to his address in Berlin. However, it never arrived at his home, but instead was found by a crew of fishermen from Heikendorf in Schleswig Holstein, more than 100 years later.
“When I saw the date I got really excited,” Konrad Fischer said, according to German publication The Local. “If the message is really this old, maybe a museum would be interested,” he added.
According to Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest message in a bottle was released on June 10, 1914 and found in 2012 – almost 98 years later. If the bottle found in Kiel is certified, it could replace the previous record.
Fischer says he has been a fisherman for 50 years and he has found lots of unusual things in his nets, such as mines, bombs, torpedoes and even a body.