Much like pirates or knights in shining armor, messages in bottles sound like the sort of thing that have only ever existed in fairytales. However, despite being a legit thing, they're also pretty rare, and notable instances of bottled notes being used as an effective form of communication are few and far between.

So, when one Australian family found a bottle washed up on a beach, they initially thought it was just a piece of trash. However, since the bottle looked quite nice, they decided to take it home with them - only to find that it had a rolled up note inside.

Amazingly, the artifact turned out to be not just any message in a bottle, but the oldest one ever discovered.

The Illman family stumbled across the object by chance on January 21st, and had only been walking along the beach because their car had gotten bogged down in the sand. While on their stroll, Tonya Illman and her friend saw a load of trash strewn about.

"Tonya saw a whole lot of rubbish on the ground, and thought she'd help pick up some rubbish," said Tonya's husband, Kym. While sifting through it, she discovered the bottle and kept it aside so that she could display it on her bookshelf at home.

When Tonya passed it to her son's girlfriend for her to take a look, the younger woman noticed what she thought was a rolled-up cigarette inside. So, as anyone would do, she tipped it out onto the sand. Once out of the bottle, however, it became apparent that it wasn't a cigarette at all, but a note tied together with a piece of string.

"Tonya tried to untie the string around the paper, but it was rather fragile, so we took it home and put it in the oven for five minutes to dry up the moisture," Kym said. "Then we unrolled it and saw printed writing. We could not see the handwritten ink at that point, but saw a printed message that asked the reader to contact the German consulate when they found the note."

Later on, the handwriting became slightly clearer, and the couple were able to make out the date: June 12th, 1886. It also included the name Paula - the title of the ship. At first, the Illmans believed that the bottle must be a fake, as surely nothing could have remained intact in the ocean for that long.

However, once they did some research, they found that the name of the ship matched, and the bottle appeared to be genuinely dated from the same era. So they took it to experts at the Western Australia Museum.

Dr. Ross Anderon, who curates maritime items at the museum, confirmed that the artifact was indeed the real deal.

"Incredibly, an archival search in Germany found Paula's original Meteorological Journal and there was an entry for 12 June 1886 made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard," he said. "The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message."

What's more, the handwriting in the journal matched the message in the bottle, so the Illmans could identify exactly who penned the note as well as where it came from.

The bottle was thrown overboard in the south-eastern Indian ocean more than 130 years ago, and was most likely washed up on the Australian coast less than a year later. Since then, it has probably remained buried in the sand, and it's a miracle the message survived so long since it didn't have any proper closure.

Writing online, Tonya described the find as "the most remarkable event in [her] life" - and it's not one she's likely to forget anytime soon.

A couple was left creeped out after opening what they believed to be a message in a bottle floating in the sea.

Although some experts believe the practice of sending bottled messages on the ocean currents dates back to before Christ, it was authors like Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens who really highlighted the practice in popular culture with their respective works in the 1800s.

Both wrote about written messages that traveled the seas (Poe's "MS. Found in a Bottle"in 1833 and Dickens' "A Message from the Sea" in 1860), which have stood the test of time and added to the mystery and intrigue around bottled messages.

So, when one traveling couple in Australia discovered a floating bottle in the seas of a far north Queensland beach, they were probably thinking it was some sort of SOS call from a shipwrecked stranded soul, a dated note from a far-off land, or perhaps a romantic gesture from a pair of lovers far away.

...What they got was something far more bizarre.

Rick and Crystal, a couple documenting their Australian adventure on TikTok, did what any of us would have done if we found a message in a bottle - they opened it.

In a video that's now been watched more than 1.8 million times on the social media platform, it shows the moment the couple finds the bottle in the water.

After opening their "first ever" message in a bottle, the couple shakes the glass vessel in an attempt to get the note out of the top - all while a white-ish substance falls to the ground.

Before they can even get the note out of the bottle, Crystal realizes she can read it from the inside. And, it turns out the note said: "Here lies the ashes of Geoffrey, if found please throw the bottle in the outgoing tide so I can continue my journey." Yes, that white-ish substance I mentioned earlier was actually some poor guy's ashes.

"Oh no," Rick can be heard saying, realizing they inadvertently brought an end to Geoffrey's ocean odyssey. The couple adds in the video description: "This was not a set up, it was a total accident."

It wasn't long before the video started making waves on the platform, and people flooded the comments section with their hilarious takes on the now-viral footage.

"Looks like his journey has ended twice," one person quipped, before a second added: "I was thinking why does every message in a bottle have sand in it but never mind I guess."

"Welcome to Australia I guess," a third added, with a fourth saying: "Insane to me that Geoff was probs walking around a few months ago and now he’s been literally [spilled] onto the sand by strangers."

Responding to one comment, Rick and Crystal revealed that they did their best to try and get as much as Geoff back into the bottle.

So, the next time you see a bottle floating in the sea, it may be best to just forgo the message and let it drift away.

Featured image credit: Burazin / Getty

If you were going to send a love letter to someone, how would you go about making sure they would definitely see it? Perhaps you would hand-deliver the letter, making sure that it got to where you wanted it to go. Maybe you would post it in a perfumed envelope, in order to remind them of your scent. Or, if you were super 21st century, you could email it to them. However, the one thing that you absolutely shouldn't do is launch it into the sea, hoping that it magically finds it's way to its intended destination.

70 per cent of the Earth's surface is water. So, if you want something to go somewhere, it's probably best not to throw it out into a vast open landscape where it will float around for years before washing up somewhere random, or just drift back to the beach from whence you threw it. However, this is exactly what one hopeless romantic/idiot did.

Elissa Wilson was out cleaning up her local beach when she came across what she is calling a "wee piece of magic." The 58-year-old found a bottle containing a romantic love letter and has since launched a worldwide investigation to find the woman behind the note.

The letter, which was placed inside a mini whiskey bottle, was penned by a woman called Sarah, who wrote about celebrating her first wedding anniversary with her partner.

It's believed that it comes from the Isle of Skye, more than 200 miles from where Sarah found in South Ayrshire, UK. However, it is not known when it was written as it wasn't dated.

Elissa said: "We do a beach litter pick every week.

"Every time it’s been glorious weather but that day it was wet and windy, it was pretty horrible.

"We were picking the beach and we were about to knock off. It’s a mini whisky bottle and the message inside is in red, that’s what must’ve caught my eye.

"The message only said it was thrown from Skye but they might not be from there.

"It’s come a fair old way down the west coast from Skye."

Elissa shared the note on Facebook in hope that she'd be able to hunt down Sarah and it has now been shared over 1,000 times. While she doesn’t feel comfortable making the full contents of the note public, part of it reads:

"Today in celebration of our first wedding anniversary, I write you this love note in a bottle

[[facebookwidget||https://www.facebook.com/elissa.scotland/posts/1825725937519381]]

"In celebration of our love of the outdoors and for this love for both to last forever, we throw it into the sea from Skye, Scotland."

Elissa said:

"I’ve not published the whole note.

"She’s [Sarah] made it public by throwing it in the sea but it’s a private note, it’s all a wee mystery.

"Her lover could be a man or woman and it’s not got a date on it so it could from a week ago or years ago.

"I think I will find Sarah, it would be a nice feeling to send it to her.

"It’s the first time I’ve found something like that, most things are quite disgusting.

"It was a wee bit of magic on a miserable day. It was just a lovely find.

"It’s sitting on my kitchen window sill and will stay there until it’s claimed."

Hopefully, Sarah can be reunited with her note. Next time she wants to send something, she should try using the mail system, it tends to work a little bit better.

An Antiques Roadshow expert had a nasty surprise after he chose to drink from a 180-year-old bottle someone had brought in to be appraised.

Now, I don't know about you, but personally I wouldn't be rushing to drink anything that's been bottled up for 180 years, let alone when you don't know what it actually is, but that didn't stop one antiques expert doing just that.

During one 2016 episode of BBC One's Antiques Roadshow in the UK, expert Andy McConnell was handed a bottle that had been brought in by a man named John.

John had found the 180-year-old port bottle in his home and had brought it on the show to find out more about it.

The expert tasted the liquid inside the ancient bottle. Credit: BBC One

Upon seeing the ancient bottle, Andy was delighted as it is apparently very rare to find them the contents "still inside".

Now, most people would happily leave said contents where they've happily resided for almost two centuries, but Andy decide to go a bit futher.

Using a syringe, he extracted some of the liquid from inside - you might think in order to send it off to a lab for analysis.

Examining the liquid in a glass, Andy commented: "It's very brown," before dipping his finger into it and licking it off in front of the horrified audience gathered around.

He guessed: "I think it's port... port or red wine... or it's full of rusty old nails and that's rust."

Unfortunately, even rusty nails would have been a slightly more attractive prospect than what was actually inside...

...which was urine.

See the moment from 9:54 below:

The host, Fiona Bruce, revealed that the bottle, which had been found buried upside down in the threshold of John's kitchen, was actually a witches bottle.

She revealed that it would have been created as a talisman to protect against "witchcraft, against curses, against misfortune coming into the home", and had included a variety of pretty gross things.

Addressing the incident, Andy declared: "It was too good of an opportunity to miss," before the bottle was sent off to Loughborough University for further testing.

Fiona confirmed: "Now, you thought it might have been port or wine... That would've been nice...

"Inside were these brass pins, all of these dating from the late 1840s, and the liquid - urine, a tiny bit of alcohol and one human hair.

"And a mysterious little creature called an ostracod, which is like a little cockle."

Thankfully Andy took it in his stride, joking: "Yummy."

Luckily, it doesn't look like it caused him any lasting damage but it's probably a good idea not to drink unidentified liquids found in bottles buried in your home in case they contain the pee of a long-deceased witch.

Featured image credit: BBC One

It's all too easy to get wrapped up in the shocking numbers that come with any large scale war, and forget the stories of incredible individual sacrifice and bravery that should be told and retold, passed down the generations.

After all, it is ordinary people who become the victims of war, and ordinary people who have to fight, leave their families, and face untold horrors in times of war.

Now, an incredible story has come to light, after a 99-year-old grandmother finally received a handwritten love letter written by her fiancé, who went missing in the Second World War.

Remarkably, the note was salvaged from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. It is believed that a cargo ship that was carrying the note sunk in 1941, which has now been passed on to 99-year-old Phyllis Ponting.

The last exchange between the pair had been a message sent from Ponting to her fiancé, Bill Walker, accepting his marriage proposal. Until now, the 99-year-old had presumed that the fact that Walker had never responded meant that he had had a change of heart of the proposal.

Walker writes that he "wept with joy" when he received her acceptance letter, and expressed his wish that she could have been there when he opened it.

“If you could only know how happy it made me, darling”, he wrote.

Phyllis Ponting still doesn't know for sure if Bill Walker survived the War, but says she doesn't think he did, as he had her address;

"I don't think Bill can have survived the war, otherwise he would have been straight round to my address in Roseland Avenue"

Ponting eventually married another man, with whom she had four children, but says her life could have been totally different if she'd received Walker's letter and been reunited with him;

"We would have been married. He loved me a lot."

The letter was discovered by marine archaeologists on the lookout for silver; instead, they found hundreds of personal letters, which will now be displayed in a museum exhibition.

Curator Shaun Kingsley said of the collection;

"It's the largest collection of letters since people started to write to survive any shipwreck, anywhere in the world.

"It shouldn't have been preserved, but because there was no light, there was no oxygen, it was darkness, it was like putting a collection of organics in a tin can, sealing it up and putting it in a fridge freezer.

"And in the conservation lab, slowly and suddenly words started to appear. Some 700 letters written from British India in 1940."

It's incredible to think that someone could be reunited with a letter sent 77 years ago that had been laying on the bottom of the ocean, but Phyllis Ponting now knows that her fiance never changed his mind, after all.