A plumber in Scotland found a bottle containing a 135-year-old message when he cut a hole in floorboards of an Edinburgh house, according to a report in the BBC.
When Peter Allan opened the floor exactly where the whisky bottle had been left, he found the Victorian time capsule and rushed downstairs to inform the owner Eilidh Stimpson, the outlet further said. The woman had to break open the bottle in order to read the note and her two children were thrilled to discover it.
"The room is 10ft by 15ft and I have cut exactly around the bottle without knowing it was there. I can't quite believe it. I was moving a radiator and cut a random hole to find pipework and there it was, I don't know what happened. I took it to the woman downstairs and said 'Look what I've found under your floor," Mr Allan told the BBC.
Amazed by what the plumber had found, Ms Stimpson decided to wait until her two children, aged 8 and 10, got home from school before opening the cork and reading what was inside. "When I picked them up I told them I had something really exciting to tell them and they said 'Is it that we are having hot dogs for tea?'" she told the BBC.
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She continued telling the outlet, "They had a few more guesses and then I told them a message in a bottle had been found in our house and they were really excited and thought it was maybe treasure."
The family had to use a hammer to break open the bottle and read the note. Ms Stimpson told BBC that all of them were "crowding around and pointing torches at it and trying to read the note".
When they opened the note, they found that it was signed and dated by two male workers. It read, "James Ritchie and John Grieve laid this floor, but they did not drin the whisky. October 6th 1887. Whoever finds this bottle may think our dust is blowing along the road," as per the report.
Ms Stimpson said that she felt terrible breaking a 135-year old bottle but has stored all the pieces in a Tupperware tub. A curator at the National Library of Scotland has recommended the family to preserve the note in an acid-free pocket. She said, "I've ordered some pockets and think ultimately we will frame the note with a piece of the bottle such as the neck because it's such an exciting and lovely thing to have."
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