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Workers at the Marine Biological Association (MBA) in England were surprised when a letter to “George Parker Bidder” arrived at their offices. They couldn’t understand why someone was writing to their former president, who had been dead for more than 60 years. It became clearer when the letter was opened. Inside, there was an old postcard. On one side was a series of questions about how the postcard had been discovered. 1．

The postcard was from a bottle dropped into the North Sea more than a century earlier. It was one of just over 1,000 bottles that Bidder had thrown into the sea as part of a study on the movement of water. 2． They were picked up by fishermen or by people walking along the beach, who then sent the postcards inside them back to Bidder.

3． It’s possible that some of the bottles with the postcards had broken. But somehow, the bottle with the recently returned postcard had remained in the sea for over a hundred years. It seems that it finally found its way to a sandy beach on an island. 4． After breaking the bottle open, she filled out the postcard and sent it off to the MBA, not realizing she was posting a message from the distant past.

Unluckily, the old postcard shows nothing new about the movement of water. All it tells the workers is where it was dropped and where it was found. 5．