In 2025, brothers Clint and Evan Buffington found a message in a Pepsi bottle on a remote beach in the Bahamas, written in 1976 by Peter R. Thompson, then a 14-year-old student from West Newbury, Massachusetts.
The note, part of a school oceanography project, was launched by a Coast Guard ship and requested the finder to return it with details of where and when it was found.
The brothers, avid beachcombers, tracked down Thompson, now 63 and living in Leominster, Massachusetts, with help from social media and Boston journalist Emily Maher.
Thompson, who didn’t recall writing the message but remembered the class, was amazed by the find nearly 50 years later. The bottle had traveled over 1,000 miles, and the discovery connected the men across decades, highlighting the human stories behind such finds.
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