An otherwise normal stroll along the beach before Independence Day may have led one New Jersey resident physician to uncover a brand - new world record for the older substance in a bottleful ever found . The discovery was made on July 3 by Amy Smyth Murphy , who noticed something bind out of the guts while walking along the shore at Corson ’s Inlet State Park .
" I noticed it because the bottleful was like a really squeamish aqua , " the salutation plug-in designer toldABC7 New York .
But there may be more to thisbottlethan a pretty color . The feeding bottle itself says “ Barr & Brother Philadelphia ” , with bottle from the same ship’s company posted to a valuation sitedating backto before the turn of the 20thcentury .
uncork the nursing bottle – a process which Smyth Murphy documented on TikTok , where she has also posted update on her research into the feeding bottle ’s origin – uncover paper that suggest a more precise particular date for the content inside the bottle , and one that could make it a record - breaker .
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The handwritten preeminence at bottom , go with by what seems to be a clientele card for a furnishing goods company run by a W.G. & J. Klemm , take : “ Yacht Neptune off Atlantic City NJ Aug 6 - 76 ” .
With these point in hand , dig into the archive ofThe Philadelphia Inquirerrevealed that a company head for the hills by W.G. & J. Klemm , two comrade , had in fact existed during the late 1800s . Smyth Murphy ’s investigation also found references made in the paper to a racing yacht named “ Neptune ” build in 1874 by a Captain Samuel Gale of the nearby Atlantic City .
All of these clues have led Smyth Murphy to resolve that the “ Aug 6 - 76 ” in the note hint it was written on August 6 , 1876 .
This would make it the oldest message in a bottle ever ascertain , beating thecurrent record book - holder , discovered in Australia , by a whole 10 years .
Before we get too excited , however , this is the kind of thing that usually needs to be affirm by other masses , normally Guinness World Records . According toNJ.com , Smyth Murphy has applied for the verification appendage to take place , but that can take months – so it ’ll be a while before we bed for sure .
As for who wrote the content , that perhaps remains the most hard of the mysteries to solve .
concord to Smyth Murphy’sresearchinto Captain Gale , his boat Neptune was a popular pleasure yacht that regularly took rider out onto the Atlantic City Inlet . Any one of those passengers , or the police captain himself , could ’ve lobbed the bottle overboard .
Even if it ’s quite the puzzle to solve , Smyth Murphy seems up for the challenge , telling nj.com : “ I really like the mystery . I roll in the hay the research . ”
