The oldest message in the world. An American woman found a bottle with a note from 1876 on the beach

Walking along the shore of Ocean City, New Jersey, a woman saw an unusual bottle in the sand. Picking it up, the researcher found a message inside, dated 1876.

It turned out that this handwritten message is the oldest message in a bottle ever found in the world. This is a very interesting discovery, writes DailyMail.

Greeting card designer Amy Smith Murphy said she was surprised to see such a strange thing on the beach. "I just thought: "This is so weird. What is this?" the 49-year-old woman said.

Murphy was very interested in the discovery and wanted to solve its mystery. First of all, she had to get the handwritten inscription that was carefully stuffed into the bottle. Her niece Amy did this with a corkscrew and tweezers.

Despite the fact that the bottle was corked, the inscription had been slightly erased over the years. "It took us 48 hours to really figure out what it said," said Amy Smith.

The caption read: "Yacht Neptune off Atlantic City, New Jersey. August 6 - 76".

The woman made certain inquiries by looking at the bottle itself, which bears the Barr & Brother Philadelphia brand. According to the appraisal website Worthpoint, the company probably manufactured the glassware between 1870 and 1900.

Inside the bottle, Murphy also found a business card of a well-known Philadelphia tool company called WG&J Klemm, which dates back to the 1800s.

The newly minted researcher wanted to know who the captain of the Neptune was. And she managed to find an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1874, which mentions Captain Samuel Gale of Atlantic City, who "has just built a magnificent yacht, which he has christened the Neptune in honor of the Neptune Club of that city."

According to the captain's obituary, the Neptune was a popular entertainment cruise ship that was in great demand among tourists due to Gale's charismatic personality.

"We're getting closer to finding out who wrote the note and who threw the bottle into the ocean," Smith Murphy said in her TikTok post.

Based on her research, Amy Smith believes that "76" is a message from 1876, making it the oldest artifact of its kind. So the American woman contacted the Guinness Book of Records to add the new discovery to its register.

According to the organization, the current record for the oldest message in a bottle dates back to June 12, 1886. It was put by German captains aboard the Barque Paula and found on Wedge Island, Australia, in 2018.

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