found for more than a century after being launched. Floating objects may ride gyres (large circulating current systems) that are present in each ocean, and may be transferred from one ocean's gyre to another's. Further, objects may be sidetracked by wind, storms, countercurrents, and ocean current variation. Accordingly, drift bottles have traveled large distances, with drifts of 4,000 to 6,000 miles and more—sometimes traveling 100 miles per day—not uncommon. Bottles have traveled from the Beaufort Sea above northern Alaska and northwestern Canada to northern Europe; from Antarctica to Tasmania; from Mexico to the Philippines; from Canada's Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay to Irish, French, Scottish, and Norwegian beaches; from the Galapagos Islands to Australia; and from New Zealand to Spain (practically antipodes). Based on empirical data collected since 1901, a computer program called OSCURS (Ocean Surface Current Simulator) digitally simulates motion and timing of floating objects in and between ocean gyres. Despite being launched substantial time periods before being found, some bottles have been found physically close to their original launch points, such as a message launched by two girls in 1915 and found in 2012 near Harsens Island, Michigan, U.S., and a ten-year-old girl's message launched into the Indian River Bay in Delaware, U.S. in 1971 and found in adjacent Delaware Seashore State Park in 2016. Historical examples Historical examples are listed in chronological order, based on year of recovery (when applicable): Early examples It is reputed that about 310 BC, Aristotle's protégé Greek philosopher Theophrastus used bottled messages to determine if the Mediterranean Sea was formed by the inflowing Atlantic Ocean. When Christopher Columbus encountered a severe storm while returning from America, he is said to have written on parchment what he had found in the New World and requested it be forwarded to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, enclosed the parchment in a waxed cloth and placed it into a large wooden barrel to be cast into the sea. The communication was never found. In 1784 Chunosuke Matsuyama sent a message detailing his and 43 shipmates' shipwrecking in a bottle that washed ashore and was found in 1935 by a Japanese seaweed collector in the village of Hiraturemura, Matsuyama's birthplace. On April 15, 1841, the Wellington, W.C. Kendrick, Commander, bound "from Madras and Cape bound to London", launched a bottled message in the mid-Atlantic (at 13° N) "for the purpose of throwing some light on the ocean