The Atlantic:

A Scottish fisherman has found the world’s oldest message in a bottle, the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed last week. It is 98 years old, and was cast into the ocean by Captain C. Hunter Brown, a scientist at the Glasgow School of Navigation, who was studying the currents in the North Sea.

The bottle was one of 1,890 bottles released on June 10, 1914, and the 315th to be entered into Captain Brown’s log, which is still kept and updated by Marine Scotland Science in Aberdeen.

That is so cool: a 100-year-old experiment still ongoing! (We’ve got to do an article on the world’s longest-running experiments, don’t we?) Do check out that Atlantic article: it has a ton of info on that experiment, and others like it.

Here’s a pic of the postcard:

Too cool.

* * * * *

We’ve written about message-in-a-bottle stories a couple times over the years. If you’ve got Uncle John’s Top Secret Bathroom Reader for Kids Only!—look on page 106!

Arrival of the first 20 slaves in Jamestown (depiction 1911)

This story is going to very soon be recognized as an absolutely astonishing piece of American history.

The very first African-American president of the United States is believed to be a direct descendant of the very first documented case of an African being made a slave in the American colonies. This goes all the way back to Jamestown—Jamestown—and the year 1640.

A research team from Ancestry.com … has concluded that President Barack Obama is the 11^thgreat-grandson of John Punch, the first documented African enslaved for life in American history. Remarkably, the connection was made through President Obama’s Caucasian mother’s side of the family.

John Punch was among the first twenty Africans forcibly brought to what would become the United States of America (and the very first known to have tried to escape!), and the very first to be designated a slave for life. And his grandkid, so to speak, became the U.S. of A.’s very first black president. And the family line goes through his white mother’s side of the family.

The mind just reels.

President Barack Obama, official White House portrait

Wikipedia article on the Jamestown Twenty.

News stories here, here, and here.

1st photo. 2nd photo.

From Smithsonian.org – just awseome:

From our very own BRI David. Thanks DH!