(This Footnote to History article was printed on page 4 of the February 20, 1920 edition of the Independence Daily Reporter, and is reprinted word-for-word below.)

Belle, Plaine, Kan., Feb. 2.

Miss Alma Lane of Belle Plaine, in August, 1916, threw a tightly corked bottle containing a slip of paper bearing her name and address into the Ninnescah river near here. Recently—three and a half years after launching the bottle she received a letter from R. S. Baldwin, an engineer for the Puget Sound Light and Power company, Seattle, Wash., stating that he had picked up the bottle while boat riding on Washington Lake canal near Seattle.

“Evidently the three-and-a-half-year journey or the bottle took it down the Ninnescah to the Arkansas river, thence to the Mississippi, out into the Gulf of Mexico, around Cape Horn and up along the Pacific coast to Seattle,” said Miss Lane. “I don’t believe by any chance it could have made its way through the Panama Canal.”