Nova Scotia boy finds message in a bottle from 1995

March 16 (UPI) -- A Nova Scotia, Canada, boy having a backyard campfire discovered a message in a bottle that was tossed into the water more than 50 miles away 25 years earlier.

Nyima Mitchell, 8, said was at his family's home in Cheticamp, on the island of Cape Breton, when he spotted a bottle under a pine tree.

He used a pair of pliers to remove the bottle's cap and discovered a message dated Aug. 12, 1995, and signed by an Aylmer, Quebec, 14-year-old who was visiting the Magdalen Islands with her family.

Britta Mitchell, Nyima's mother, said the bottle likely spent some time in a nearby pond after blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean.

"We think it was a few years ago, when the waves all came over the beach," Britta Mitchell told CBC News. "It only happened once since we moved here in six years."

The message's author, Nellie Nadeau, 39, said she was shocked to receive a letter from Nyima Mitchell saying her bottle had been found.

"It's just unexpected news that comes in the mail that someone found a bottle that you completely forgot about, and that was sent so long ago," she said. "It gave me chills for several days."

Nadeau said she sent a reply, but the letter came back stamped return to sender. She used social media to find Mitchell's family and another letter is on the way.

A Scottish woman walking on the beach in Mangaster, on the Shetland Islands, recently discovered a message in a bottle that had been sent 21 years earlier by a member of a scouting group in the Faroe Islands town of Klaksvik.

Megan Keppie said she had to enlist the help of social media to translate the letter, which was written in Faroese. She said she was able to contact the scouting group, but the author, Finn Johannesen, had since moved away.