A French man cleaning trash from a beach found a message in a bottle that had been authored by a Massachusetts fifth grader 26 years earlier.
Benjamin Lyons wrote the message as part of an assignment for science teacher Frederic J. Hemmila’s class at Sandwich’s Forestdale School in October 1997.
The messages written by the class were inserted into bottles and dropped into the ocean by a boat captain who was Hemmila’s friend.
Hubert Eriau, 71, said in his reply to the school district that he typically spends his mornings fishing and cleaning up beach trash in Les Sables-d’Olonne, Vendée, France. He said he came across the message in a bottle on Aug. 11.
Carol Archambeault, a 6th grade science teacher in the district, said other messages in bottles from Hemmila’s class have been found over the years, including one in Greenland.
