File Photo, Image Credit: Flickr User Sanne Roemen, via CC

An Australian couple Sean and Shelly Thomas recently vacationing in Scotland found a bottle in the sand dunes of Rattray Head on Scotland’s north-east coast. Imagine their surprise when they opened the bottle and found a 44-year-old message.

Sean Thomas who is a collector and loves to collect unique things found this bottle on one of his routine hunts. The couple noticed that the bottle had some note inside and broke it open. The message was written by a 14-year-old boy named Raymond Davidson from Carlisle, UK. The time stamp on the message was 15th January 1971.

The couple immediately wanted to find this person who wrote the message, and in fact were able to track down Raymond Davidson, now 58.

The above discovery is not a standalone incident. Just last month a team of six canoeists paddling along Victoria’s inner harbor found a bottle that seemed to contain some dust. On opening the bottle they found a guy’s picture with the message “celebration of life,”, the paddlers then realized that the bottle contained the ashes of some man. Since then they  carry the message in the bottle named “Ash” everywhere so that it gets to travels around the world.

Don’t you think that a message-in-a-bottle has a certain element of mystery to it? This is not something that people started doing recently, we humans have been posting messages like this for at least 2,000 years. A famous song, “Message in a Bottle”; a renowned book, “Message in a Bottle,” and the movie version of that book; there are businesses that make message-in-a-bottle wedding invitations!

Did you know you can also send a “virtual” message in a bottle. How so? It is an email sent to a completely random email address via a website that offers this service.

But why do people do it?

Some people like to share their moments of happiness and honor it by doing so. There is an uncertainty about which way the bottle would go, where would it end up. That is alluring to many people.

If you have ever sent a message in a bottle then please do share your experience with us.