In the U.S. state of New Jersey, conservationist John Kauterman discovered a glass bottle containing a note—buried for over half a century—while clearing out wetlands. According to NJ.com, the message was dated August 20, 1973.
The note was written by nine-year-old Lori Blair Brown. In it, she claimed she was being forced to dive into shark-infested waters and asked the finder to contact her family, providing her home address. Kauterman initially thought it was a child’s prank but decided to investigate out of curiosity. During his search, he came across an obituary revealing that Lori Brown had passed away in 2017 at the age of 52.
The conservationist later managed to track down Brown’s older sister, Allison Spencer. She admitted that she had written down the text as her younger sister dictated it during a family vacation.
“She was a creative person with a great sense of humor, and she was convinced the bottle would be found,” Spencer said. And so, a message written as a joke in 1973 finally reached its intended audience 53 years later.
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