A 108-year-old Message in a Bottle

    On November 30, 1906, George Bidder dropped a bottle from a boat into the North Sea. The weighted glass bottle sank almost to the sea floor, and then it move slowly for 108 years and 138 days.

    Its journey ended when Marianne Winkler found the bottle in 2015. Winkler was then on vacation on Amrum Island. She picked up the bottle when it was washed up onto the beach. She saw a piece of paper inside, but didn't break it open. She could tell that the bottle was old. So she didn't want to damage it.

    Finally she got the piece of paper out of the bottle. She found that the paper was actually a postcard. On the back of the card there was this message: The Marine Biological Association（海洋生物学协会） would pay a shilling（先令） for the bottle. A shilling was a unit of money that was used in Great Britain before the early 1970s.

    Winkler filled out the card and posted it. The association was surprised to get a postcard addressed to George Bidder, the president of the association from 1939 to 1945. The workers of the association searched on the Internet to find a shilling. They found one and sent it to Winkler as a reward.

    The message in the bottle was the oldest ever re-discovered. For this reason Marianne Winkler got a place in  “Guinness World Records”（吉尼斯世界纪录）. She broke the record for the oldest message in a bottle.

    Winkler's bottle was not the only one Bidder sent to sea. Between 1904 and 1906, he spent away more than one thousand bottles. He placed postcards inside them. The bottles were part of a research  project to map currents（洋流） in the North Sea. This was the best method at that time. But whether the association could get the bottles back depended on the people who found them. The association reported that about 55 percent of the bottles were returned. They added that the experiment was a success as it showed the east-to-west flow of the North Sea's currents.

    Yesterday the police were joined by more than 20 volunteers in the continuing search for the two missing teenagers, Vicky Gray and Tom Hunter, and their guide, Gavin Jones. The police said that they had disappeared during an adventure tour of Cape York Peninsula.

    This was the second day of the search and the police were now very worried about the safety of the three missing people.

    The police said that the search had covered a wide area, but the rain forest was thick and their work was made harder by the recent rain. Later on Chief Inspector (警官) Roger Fleet said, “The travellers had a radio with them. If they had been in trouble, they would have called us.”

    The three travellers left Cooktown very early on Saturday morning in a Toyota car. They took a small dirt road that runs down to the Daintree River, a dangerous river full of crocodiles (鳄鱼). Chief Inspector Roger Fleet said the tourists wouldn't have got into trouble if they had stayed on the main road.

    A photo of Vicky and Tom was found by a policeman under the “Be Careful about crocodiles” sign near the river. Why was the photo left behind? This is just one of the unanswered questions. Other questions are: Why was the photo left behind? Why was the Toyota parked and locked at the edge of the rain forest? The police said that the travellers had left a map of the area behind. Why? Why had someone drawn a cross on the point where the car is? Is this a sign? What does it mean? If anyone can give information or has seen these three young people, contact the local police in Cooktown.

    Joanne "Jo" Rowling was born on 31 July 1965, pen name, is a British novelist, best known as the writer of the Harry Potter books. The Harry Potter books are world famous. People bought more than 400 million copies. They have become the best—selling book series in history. Rowling finished the first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997. Later Jo published 6 more — the last, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007.

    Jo is said to be the twelfth richest woman in the UK. In October 2010, Jo was named the “Most Influential (有影响的)Woman in Britain.

    It was a beautiful spring morning. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the sun was warm but not too hot, so Mr Hunt was surprised(惊讶) when he saw an old man at the bus stop with a big, strong black umbrella ( 雨伞) in his hand.

    Mr Hunt said to him, "Do you think it is going to rain today？""No，" said the old man, "I don't think so."

    "Then are you carrying the umbrella to keep the sun off you？"

    "No, the sun is not very hot in spring."

    Mr Hunt looked at the big umbrella again, and the man said, "I am an old man, and my legs are not very strong, so I really need a walking stick. But when I carry a walking stick, people will say 'Look at that poor old man. 'and I don't like that. When I carry an umbrella in fine weather, people only say，'Look at that stupid(愚蠢的) man."