Nov. 9 (UPI) -- A couple hiking in northeastern France came across an unusual historical artifact -- a carrier pigeon message dating from 110 years earlier.
Jade Halaoui said he was hiking with his partner in the Ingersheim area when they spotted a tiny aluminum cylinder on the ground.
"I dug it up and I cut it to see what was inside," Halaoui recalled to the Les Dernieres Nouvelles d'Alsace newspaper.
Inside was a small piece of paper bearing a message the couple could not make out. They took it to the Linge Memorial museum, where curator Dominique Jardy enlisted the help of a German-speaking friend to translate the small script.
The message, dated July 16 and believed to have been from the year 1910, was authored by a Prussian infantry officer and details military drills in the Ingersheim area when Alsace was under German control.
Jardy said the aluminum capsule is believed to have been dropped by the carrier pigeon tasked with delivering it to its intended recipient.
Jardy said the discovery was extremely unusual.
"It's really very, very, very rare," he told CNN. "It's really exceptional."
He said the message will now be displayed at the museum.
