In 1997, 5th grade students in Cape Cod, Massachusetts participated in a science project that involved sending messages in a bottle out to sea on the Nantucket Sound to learn about ocean currents. A retired fisherman living in the Bay of Biscay in France recently came across one of these messages in a bottle while collecting trash on the beach, written by a student named Ben Lyons. The letter was still perfectly intact a generation later, so the 71-year-old decided to send a reply. Secretaries at Lyon’s elementary school were puzzled when they received a letter addressed to “5th grader Ben Lyons”, and decided to track him down to share the response. Although the project is no longer assigned at the school due to ocean pollution, Lyons said the discovery brought back great memories of his school days and is happy to have a pen-pal across the ocean.
Image via NBC Boston
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