A 9-year-old's message in a bottle took 53 years to come back. Her sister was the one who got it.

A message in a bottle written by two sisters in August 1973 and cast into the Atlantic Ocean was recovered 53 years later by John Kauterman, co-founder of the Tidelands Initiative, while cleaning up New Jersey wetlands; the letter was returned to Allison Spencer, whose younger sister Laurie died of cancer nine years earlier, providing an unexpected reconnection to her late sibling.