In 1956 a young sailor at sea was feeling very far from his family and friends. He wrote a note and put it into a bottle. Then he closed the bottle and threw it into the ocean. The note in the bottle asked any pretty girl who found it to write to him. Two years later a man was fishing on a shore in Sicily. The fisherman saw the sailor’s bottle and picked it up. As a joke, he gave it to his pretty daughter. Still as a joke, the girl wrote the lonely sailor a letter. More letters went back and forth. Soon the sailor visited Sicily. He and the girl were married in 1958. This is one of the many stories about drifting bottles that have changed people’s lives. Strange as it may seem, a sealed bottle is a good traveler at sea. It can travel safely through storms that destroy ships. And glass will last almost forever. The speed of a drifting bottle changes with the wind and the ocean current. A bottle drifting in a quiet place may not move a mile in a month. Another bottle may move 100 miles in a day. But no one can be sure just where a bottle will go. For example, two bottles of the same size, shape and weight were dropped at the same time into the ocean near Brazil. The first bottle drifted east for 130 days. It was found on a shore in Africa. The second bottle went northwest for 196 days, and was found in Nicaragua. Two other bottles, which were thrown into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, landed 350 days later in France, only a few yards from each other. Probably the longest trip ever made by a bottle began in 1929. In that year, a bottle was thrown into the South Indian Ocean. A note inside the bottle could be read through the glass. The finder was requested to report when and where he picked it up, and then to throw the bottle back into the sea without opening it. This bottle first went east, to the southern tip of South America. Someone found it, reported it and threw it back into the sea. Then others found it, reported it and threw it back. This happened several times. From Cape Horn the bottle moved into the Atlantic Ocean. Then went to the Indian Ocean again, passing the place where it had first been dropped. Finally, this bottle reached Western Australia in 1935. It had traveled 16,800 nautical miles in 2447 days. That was about 6.8 miles each day. Taken from Reader’s Digest, Reading, Book 4 State True or False for the statements below! 1. This story tells about a pretty girl who married a sailor. 2. Storms often destroy bottles. 3. All drifting bottles travel at the same speed. 4. Two bottles of the same size, shape and weight may drift in different directions. 5. Probably no bottle has ever traveled for more than two years.