What a story this one is. On March 6, 2018, beachgoers in Western Australia stumbled upon something extraordinary — a green beer bottle half-buried in the sand that turned out to contain the world's oldest message in a bottle. Tossed into the ocean 132 years earlier from a German vessel called Paula, the note inside had completed an almost unbelievable odyssey across the seas before finally washing ashore.
It was Tonya Illman who first noticed the bottle while enjoying a walk with her family along the beach. "My husband and I were just strolling along the sand dunes above the shoreline, and I saw something sticking out of the sand about half a meter down," she recalled. "It looked like a glass beer bottle, so I dug it up, and to our amazement, we found an old, faded note inside." When they examined the weathered slip of paper more closely, they realized it was penned in German and bore a date of 1886. Written on the note were the ship captain's name and address, along with instructions asking whoever found it to return the message to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg — a prestigious center dedicated to maritime research and navigation.
What happened next is perhaps just as remarkable as the find itself. The Illmans managed to track down the descendants of Captain Kurt Pedersen and informed them of the discovery. The family was reportedly astonished and deeply moved to learn about this tangible connection to their ancestor. Honoring the captain's original wish, they also sent the 126-year-old message back to Hamburg. "We thought it would be an amazing adventure to try and find Captain Federsen's relatives and return this remarkable message to them after all these years," Illman explained. "The whole story is incredible – from how long ago it was thrown overboard to how far it has traveled across oceans and finally being discovered on a remote beach near where we live. It really is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery."
Before this find, a different German ship called the Mimi had claimed the title of the world's oldest bottled message. Back in 1866, the Mimi had dropped a similar bottle into the water — just 20 years before Paula did the same.