World’s oldest “message in a bottle” found. The message, encased in a whiskey bottle, was discovered by Paul Allan, owner of WF Wightman Plumbing, during excavations at a house in Edinburgh’s Morningside.
Surprised by his accidental discovery, Allan says he ran to the owner of the house, Eilidh Stimpson. Stimpson decided to wait until his two children got home from school, then smashed the bottle with a hammer to reveal the note itself.
“We were desperately trying to pull the note out with tweezers and pliers, but the note started to tear a bit,” Stimpson said. “We didn’t want to do any more damage, so unfortunately we had to break the bottle.”
The torn paper covered in scribbled handwriting read, “James Ritchie and John Grieve laid this floor but didn’t drink the whiskey. October 6, 1887.” Allan suspects the note was probably found under a servant’s room when the house was originally built, but little is known about the identity of the note’s authors. .
This 135-year-old message is thought to be the oldest bottle message ever found. The previous record belonged to a 132-year-old message found in Australia in 2018. The message, in German, was found in a bottle thrown into the sea from a ship. However, if this latest find in Scotland is genuine and accurately dated, then it will be labeled as the world’s oldest bottle message.
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