A German fisherman named Konrad Fischer found the brown bottle near Kiel, Germany. He said he nearly threw the bottle back into the water after pulling it out of a fishing net. Then he noticed something inside.

    The bottle in good condition contained a Danish postcard with two German stamps, dated May 17, 1913. Although dampness had made most of the writing illegible（字迹模糊的）, the readable part of the message asked whoever found it to return it to an address in Berlin. It even contained two stamps to pay for postage.

    From the address, researchers found that the postcard was written by a man named Richard Platz, who was 20 years old when he wrote the message. While he was hiking on the Baltic coast with a nature appreciation group. he threw the bottle into the sea. Then the researchers began a search for any living relatives of his. Sure enough, they were able to find his 62-year-old granddaughter, Angela Erdmann, who still lives in Berlin.

  “It was almost unbelievable,”Erdmann said upon being presented with her grandfather's bottle and message.“That was a pretty moving moment. Tears rolled down my face."

    Erdmann never knew her grandfather，who died in 1946，but says that the discovery of the bottle has made her want to learn more about him.

    The bottle remained on display at the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg until May 1st. After that, the researchers examined the postcard and tried to figure out the meaning of the rest of the message.

    Previously, the oldest message found in a bottle spent nearly 98 years at sea and was discovered in April 2012, according to Guinness World Records.

    Proudly reading my words, I glanced around the room, only to find my classmates bearing big smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes. Confused, I glanced toward my stone-faced teacher. Having no choice, I slowly raised the report I had slaved over, hoping to hide myself. “What could be causing everyone to act this way?”

    Quickly, I flashed back to the day Miss Lancelot gave me the task. This was the first real talk I received in my new school. It seemed simple: go on the Internet and find information about a man named George Washington. Since my idea of history came from an ancient teacher in my home country, I had never heard of that name before. As I searched the name of this fellow, it became evident that there were two people bearing the same name who looked completely different! One invented hundreds of uses for peanuts, while the other led some sort of army across America. I stared at the screen, wondering which one my teacher meant. I called my grandfather for a golden piece of advice; flip (掷) a coin. Heads—the commander, and tails—the peanuts guy. Ah! Tails, my report would be about the great man who invented peanut butter, George Washington Carver.

    Weeks later, standing before this unfriendly mass, I was totally lost. Oh well, I lowered the paper and sat down at my desk,burningto find out what I had done wrong. As a classmate began his report, it all became clear, “My report is on George Washington, the man who started the American Revolution.” The whole world became quite! How could I know that she meant that George Washington?

    Obviously, my grade was awful. Heartbroken but fearless, I decided to turn this around. I talked to Miss Lancelot, but she insisted: No re-dos; no new grade. I felt that the punishment was not justified, and I believed I deserved a second chance. Consequently, I threw myself heartily into my work for the rest of the school year. Ten months later, that chance unfolded as I found myself sitting in the headmaster's office with my grandfather, now having an entirely different conversation. I smiled and flashed back to the embarrassing moment at the beginning of the year as the headmaster informed me of my option to skip the sixth grade. Justice is sweet!

    Many foreign students report feeling lonely or unwelcome in Australia. Those feelings are among the reasons why Australia is taking a close look at its international education industry. But wherever international students go, making friends may not always be easy. Elisabeth Gareis of Baruch College in New York surveyed 454 international students. They were attending four-year colleges and graduate schools in the American South and Northeast.

    Students from English-speaking countries and from northern and central Europe were more likely to be happy with their friendships. But 38% of the international students said they had no close friends in the United States. And half of the students from East Asia said they were unhappy with the number of American friends they had. Thirty percent said they wished their friendships could be deeper and more meaningful.

    Professor Gareis says, “Students from East Asia have cultures that are different on many levels from the culture in the United States. There are also language problems, and maybe some social skills, such as small talks, which are possibly not as important in their native countries, where it's not as important to start friendships with small talks. Many East Asian students blamed themselves for their limited friendships with Americans, for not speaking the language well enough and for not knowing the culture well enough.”

    VOA's Students Union blogger Jessica Stahl did her own survey to find out how American students and foreign students relate to each other. More than 100 students, about half of them American, answered her online questions. Half of the international students and 60 % of the Americans said they related as well or better to the other group than to their own group.

    Professor Gareis says, “International students who make friends with host nationals are, overall, more satisfied with their stay in the host country. They have better language skills, better academic performance and better attitudes toward the host country.”

    Edward Hibberd Johnson was an American inventor. He lived in New York City in the 1800s. In 1882, Johnson had an idea. It would change the look of Christmas forever.

    Johnson worked as a boss at a technology company. In 1871, he hired a young man to work for him. The man's name was Thomas Edison. Edison was a great worker. He came up with many new ideas. Later, Edison left to start his own company. Johnson followed him. Johnson started turning Edison's ideas into money. In 1880, Edison invented the light bulb. No one knew how much it was worth. At the time, most homes did not have the electricity to power it. However, Johnson helped start a company to sell the bulbs.

    Before long, Mr. Johnson had a bright idea. Christmas trees were very popular. They were so beautiful because of their candles. Flickering (闪烁的) flames were perfect for Christmas. But they were also dangerous. They could easily start a fire.

    Mr. Johnson thought of a way to fix this. He set up a Christmas tree by one of his windows. Then he took 80 colored light bulbs and hung them around it. The lights were red, white and blue. People on the street stopped to look. They admired the shining Christmas tree. It was so popular that Johnson made it a tradition. Each year he added more lights. In 1884, there were 120 light bulbs on his tree. The lights were not cheap. In 1900, a string of 16 bulbs cost $12. That was a lot of money back then, because people made less. In today's money, that is about $350. But over time, they started to cost less. By the 1930s, colored light bulbs were everywhere.

    Today millions of light sets are sold in America each year. They light 80 million homes. Some of them are now used for other holidays too. They are used on Halloween and Valentine's Day. But it all started with Johnson's Christmas tree.

    Boomerang children who return to live with their parents after university can be good for families, leading to closer, more supportive relationships and increased contact between the generations, a study has found.

    The findings contradict research published earlier this year showing that returning adult children trigger a significant decline in their parents' quality of life and wellbeing.

    The young adults taking part in the study were "more positive than might have been expected about moving back home—the shame is reduced as so many of their peers are in the same position, and they acknowledged the benefits of their parents' financial and emotional support. Daughters were happier than sons, often slipping back easily into teenage patterns of behaviour, the study found.

    Parents on the whole were more uncertain, expressing concern about the likely duration of the arrangement and how to manage it. But they acknowledged that things were different for graduates today, who leave university with huge debts and fewer job opportunities.

    The families featured in the study were middle-class and tended to view the achievement of adult independence for their children as a "family project". Parents accepted that their children required support as university students and then as graduates returning home, as they tried to find jobs paying enough to enable them to move out and get on the housing ladder.

    "However", the study says, "day-to-day tensions about the prospects of achieving different dimensions of independence, which in a few extreme cases came close to conflict, characterised the experience of a majority of parents and a little over half the graduates".

    Areas of disagreement included chores, money and social life. While parents were keen to help, they also wanted different relationships from those they had with their own parents, and continuing to support their adult children allowed them to remain close.

    The first newspapers were written by hand and put up on walls in public places. The earliest daily newspaper was started in Rome in 59 BC. In the 700's the world's first printed newspaper was published. Europe didn't have a regularly published newspaper until 1609, when one was started in Germany.

    The first regularly published newspaper in the English language was printed in Amsterdam in 1620. In 1621, an English newspaper was started in London and was published once a week. The first daily English newspaper was The Daily Courant (《每日新闻》). It came out in March, 1702.

    In 1690, Benjamin Harris printed the first American newspaper in Boston. But not long after it was first published, the government stopped the paper. In 1704, John Campbell started The Boston Newsletter (《波士顿新闻通讯》), the first newspaper published in the American colonies. By 1760, the colonies had more than thirty daily newspapers. There are now about 1,800 daily papers in the United States.

    Today, as a group, English language newspapers have the largest circulation (发行量) in the world. But the largest circulation for a newspaper is that of the Japanese newspaper Asahi Dhimbun (《朝日新闻》). It sells more than 11 million copies every day.