An amazing story of a message in a bottle was a letter written by Private Thomas Hughes, a British World War I soldier. In 1914 he wrote a letter to his wife, placed it in a green ginger beer bottle, and tossed it into the English Channel. In 1999 a fisherman found the bottle. Hughes wife had died in 1979, but they located his 86-year-old daughter in New Zealand and sent her the message.