Tonya Illman shows the bottle that contained the 132-year-old message (right), which was found on a beach near Wedge Island, Australia. [Photo/Agencies] MELBOURNE - The oldest known message in a bottle was found on an Australian beach 132 years after being thrown from a German ship in the Indian Ocean as part of an experiment to track currents, experts said. The Dutch gin bottle, with no cork or top, was spotted by Tonya Illman in January in remote sand dunes 180 kilometers north of Perth, the capital of Western Australia state. Inside, her family discovered a note tightly rolled up and tied with string, carrying the date June 12, 1886, and the name of the ship, Paula. We took it home and dried it out, and when we opened it, we saw it was a printed form, in German, with very faint German handwriting, Illman said. Her husband searched online to find that, in an experiment run from 1864 to 1933 by the Deutsche Seewarte, or German Naval Observatory, ship captains would throw bottles overboard, each with a message giving the date, the ship's name, its location coordinates, home port and destination. It was clearly very exciting, but we needed a lot more information, said Illman's husband, Kym. We wanted to know if what we had found was historically significant or a very inventive hoax. The family took their find to the Western Australian Museum, which got experts in Germany and the Netherlands to confirm the bottle was made in Holland in the 19th century, the paper matched the era and the vessel Paula had sailed from Cardiff to Makassar in 1886, as the message stated. German experts turned up the ship's journal, with a captain's entry from June 12, 1886, showing that a drift bottle was thrown overboard. The coordinates, 950 km from Australia's west coast, matched those on the note. The handwriting in both journal and note also matched. The find has been authenticated by the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency and Germany's National Meteorological Service. The forms have changed a lot over the years, but in the 1860 period, the form is exactly what you have, the BSH said in a report. Researchers think the bottle probably washed up on the coast within a year of being thrown overboard, to be buried in sand until a storm uncovered it. The message and the bottle will be on display for two years at the museum in the Australian port city of Fremantle. Reuters wristbands for eventscamo silicone wristbandsfuck cancer braceletcolored rubber bands for braceletsathletic silicone wristbandsembossed printed wristbandrubber band braceletssilicone wristbandsmiscarriage awareness silicone braceletsdual-layer-wristbandcolor-filled-wristband
China's population will not see a drastic decline in the next few decades, according to the top health authority on Monday.The population is forecast to peak?at 1.45 billion around 2030, stand at more than 1.38 billion in 2050, and reach 1 billion by the end of the century.The figures were provided by Yang Wenzhuang, head of grassroots family planning supervision for the National Health and Family Planning Commission.It will take 40 years, starting in 1981, for the population to increase from 1 billion to 1.4 billion, and another 70 years for the population to decrease to 1 billion again, he said on Monday. The population will not decline at a rapid rate.Yang made the comments after the announcement of a decrease in the birthrate last year, despite implementation in 2016 of a universal second-child policy that allows all couples in China to have two children.Last year, about 17.23 million babies were born in China, roughly 630,000 fewer than in 2016, according to data released in January by the National Bureau of Statistics.Yang said a recent survey organized by the health commission, which was conducted by a third party, showed economic pressure is the main issue that prevents couples from having a second child.More than 82 percent of couples said the major reason for not having a second child is because of the financial burden, while others said they could not find time to take care of a second child, he said.
