Today I Learned …

In 1784, Chunosuke Matsuyama, a shipwrecked Japanese sailor, carved a message into thin peices of wood from a coconut tree, put the message into a bottle, and tossed it into the ocean in the hope that someone might find him on the Pacific island where he and his crew were stranded. The bottle eventually washed ashore 151 years later in 1938 in Hiraturemura — the village where Matsuyama was born. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Mind Blown!)