Message in a bottle receives a reply

A U.S. college student received a response to a message in a bottle he tossed into the ocean nine years ago. Max Vredenburgh posted a photo of the letter and reply on Twitter on Friday saying, “I am mind blown.”

How far did the bottle travel? The bottle began its journey on Aug. 21, 2010, in Rockport, Mass., and covered more than 3,700 miles across the Atlantic to the coast of southern France, where someone named G. Dubois found it on Oct. 10. Vredenburgh was 10 years old when he put a letter into a wine bottle and cast it into the ocean. He wrote that he liked the beach, the color blue, and outer space and asked the recipient to “please write back.” He received on Friday a response from Dubois, who noted that Vredenburgh had “grown a lot” since writing the original letter and included maps showing where the bottle washed ashore.