Engineers discover a 132-year-old message in a bottle in a Scottish lighthouse

LONDON - After two centuries of faithfully guiding sailors around a blustery headland in southwest Scotland, the lighthouse needed some attention.

Ross Russell, a mechanical engineer, was helping refurbish the Corsewall Lighthouse in the village of Kirkcolm when he peeked into the cavity in a wall of the old structure. That's when he saw it: an old glass bottle with something curled up inside.

He and his colleagues fished the bottle out of its hiding place, called the lighthouse keeper and congregated at the bottom of the structure to inspect their discovery. Inside the bottle, which was stoppered with rusted wire wrapped around an old cork, was a note handwritten in cursive.

How old, exactly, became clear when they drilled away the cork and pulled the note through the bottleneck using two cables. The date on the header: Sept 4, 1892.

"We were shaking,...