Bottle ground

Glass bottles containing messages are fascinating.

Plumber Peter Allan, 50, was cutting a hole in the floorboards of a house in Morningside, Edinburg, Scotland to service some pipes when he found underneath a whiskey bottle with a note inside.

Allan handed the bottle to the homeowner, Eilidh Stimpson, who was awestruck. She pulled at the old paper using a tweezer and plier, but the brittle note was getting ripped so she just smashed the bottle with a hammer to get it.

The note was signed and dated by two male workers and read: "James Ritchie and John Grieve laid this floor, but they did not drink the whisky. October 6th, 1887, the BBC reported.

"Whoever finds this bottle may think our dust is blowing along the road," read the note from the 135-year-old bottle.

According to the BBC, a family friend found the men's names in an 1881 census, showing they lived just a few miles away in Newington, Edinburgh.

Other discovered old bottles are shocking.

Some 45 half-pint clear glass bottles weighing 1.5 pounds each were found by a digger for redevelopment works at an old Victorian school in the Kingshill area of Swindon, England on 25 November.

Project manager Phil Harris called the Wiltshire police to report the milk bottle-like containers and he was asked to send photos of the find. The next thing, police were cordoning off streets around the area, residents were told to stay home and members of the army's Royal Logistics Corps arrived.

The discovered bottles turned out to be phosphorous hand grenades that instantly ignite once released and their liquid contents react with air, according to Swindon Advertiser. The World War II bombs were made by the Home Guard and intended for use in the event that the UK was invaded by Nazi Germany, according to the newspaper.

A bomb disposal unit safely detonated the grenades at a central park.