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A seven-year-old boy from Sheffield tossed a message in a bottle into the North Sea and was amazed to receive 22 replies - on his birthday!

Finley Hibberd from Lowedges, threw the bottle into the sea at Bridlington with the message,  “Hello My Name is Finely. I am from Sheffield, England. Please tell me where you found my bottle.”

Over a month later - and on his birthday - he received 22 letters in the post. Expecting them to be birthday cards, he ripped them open to find that they were replies from children at Staindrop School in County Durham.

Finley said, “It was amazing. I didn’t think I would get anything back but I got all these letters. I am going to stay in touch and write letters back.”

Finley’s mum, Jenny Hyatt, said, “We threw it into the sea but didn’t expect anything back. When he received all the cards on his birthday he thought had had just got loads of birthday cards. It is an exciting thing to do - everyone should have a go.”

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No this is not a hi-tech birthday card, but a rather clever Granny who caught her thieving carer pinching her pension; by hiding a mini camera behind a birthday card.Eileen Forte, 87, who suffered from a stroke, got her granddaughter Tina Priestman, 47, to set up the camera.

And the clever move proved to be a massive success after the Grandma caught her carer thieving her pension right on camera.

The footage showed Angela Holman, 33, taking a £20 note from Eileen’s bag and £40 from her purse. Holman had become a close friend of the family and was trusted that she looked after their grandmother properly.

Mrs Priestman said, 47, said, “Nan sent her a card saying ‘To a wonderful carer.’

“As a carer she was very good and Nan thought the world of her.”

Forte began to get suspicious of Holman after money started going missing from her purse. Mrs Forte didn’t want to believe her friend would do such a thing but knew that the money was going missing and Mrs Priestman needed proof to convince others of what she was doing.

So Mrs Priestman set up a covert operation to catch the thief. By making a small hole in the birthday card, she hid a camera behind it which was focused on the exact spot where Mrs Forte kept her handbag.

Banknotes that were in Mrs Forte’s bag were marked up and the camera was set to record everything that went on in the living room.

Mrs Priestman said, “We knew that she had taken £40 but when we watched the footage we could still hardly believe it.

“We watched in disbelief.“

The police were called and Holman was arrested on suspicion of theft. The 33-year-old denied taking the money but after the police found the £40 marked notes in her car she pleaded guilty to two counts of theft at a virtual court at Bromley Police Station when she learnt that she had been caught red handed.

Mrs Forte said, “When she was arrested I could not believe it was her.

“She was a good friend, a good friend.

“It upset me a great deal.

“She used to say you are like my Nan and I looked at her like sort of a granddaughter.

“I can still hardly believe it and I feel sickened.

“Now I have two trustworthy good carers.”

Her granddaughter added, “It needed for her not to be able to tod that to anybody else and this is why we did what we did. “She needed to be caught so no one else would have to go through what we have been through.”

She has also been suspended by her employer Care UK when the allegations were made and has now been dismissed.

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A time capsule in celebration of John Lennon’s life will be buried on his 70th birthday.

Three pods will be buried on October 9th and will not be opened until 2040.

Fans of The Beatles star are being called by organisers to come up with ideas for items to fill the capsules and are also planning to include Lennon’s post-Beatles recordings.

Organisers are hoping to preserve the musician’s legacy of peace and love for future generations.

The idea has had the blessing of Yoko Ono, who said, “I am delighted to support this effort to help share John’s music and messages of peace and love with children of today and tomorrow.

“I know John’s work, life and dreams will help inspire them to bring a better world for everyone.”

Ideas can be submitted at www.boxofvision.com/timecapsule.

If you aren’t as creative as this and need someone else to do all the hard work for you, then why not send a personalised birthday card with ecards.co.uk. The team have designed some fantastic birthday cards full of creativity and bound to put a smile on the birthday boy or girls face. For more information about the free ecards service visit ecards.co.uk.

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A British student on a field trip to the Alps found a mail bag from the Malabar Princess, an Air India Lockheed Constellation which crashed killing 40 passengers and eight crew members 60 years ago.

The third year geography student was on a three day trip to examine global warming and added to the legend of the popular French film Amelie, which say Audrey Tautou’s character create a fictional letter from a lover who died in the crash, for a lonely female concierge after hearing about mountaineers finding similar letters.

And some of the letters contained have survived leading student Freya Cowan to embark on a project to reunite about 75 letters and birthday cards to senders or intended recipients.

Miss Cowan, 22, discovered the mail bag which has descended about 8,000 ft due to falling rocks and melting snow.

Inside she found four bundles and the postmark on the letter which read, “Bombay 1950.”

“I thought it was a joke, given that only moments before I had been talking about the crash,” she said.

Over the past years a few letters from the Malabar Princess had been recovered but nothing on this scale. None of the mail was written by passengers on the plane who were seamen bound for a new ship in Sunderland. The mail bag was heading for the US and the Dundee team has already succeeded in finding the owners of some of the correspondence.

Tim Reid, a glaciologist who was also on the trip will be forwarding a letter to the daughter of Captain Hank Smith, a US pilot who died in 1999 but wrote a colourful account of his time working in India. “Hank’s letter tells a fantastic story about how he was working in Bombay and the Middle East,” said Mr Reid. 

“He had a charter to Basra but had trouble with the aircraft and came down near a British Army encampment. They didn’t have much fresh water so he drank a lot of beer.

“He was there for three or four weeks while the plane was fixed, but needed the help of the Army to fend off Bedouin tribes looking to steal the plane’s equipment.”

It is not known to whom the letter was sent, but Mr Reid traced Mr Smith’s daughter in Texas. “She was absolutely astonished,” he said.

He aims to send her the letter after work to preserve it.

Another student, David Barratt, traced the intended recipient of a letter sent by D Jones, a Salvation Army officer, to her bother, Harlan Cleveland. He is now in his 90s and lives in a Salvation Army retirement home in St Petersburg, Florida.

Just five days before the crash on the night of October 30th 1950, the letter describes her missionary work in India and asks her brother for money for a camera.

Two other typewritten letters and two handwritten ones, all in the same envelope from ‘Myra’ who also appeared to be a missionary is one of the letters that Miss Cowan is keen to deliver. They were sent to a Mrs Georgianna Roadaswell in Ohio, possibly within the village of Haskins. 

A letter dated on October 30th 1950 addressed for a Lady Moore, ironically - considering the letter never arrived - says, “I do not often take the time to answer a letter in less than an hour after it arrives but there are some things in yours that I want to talk about with you.” 

Her problems in India were discussed in the letter saying, “There is a growing anti-missionary feeling among some of the folks.

“I feel it is all from one source entirely and I have prayed so often that she might be led into the Light.”

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A Royal Mail Postman has been sentenced to 240 hours of community service after being caught opening children’s birthday cards in the hope of finding money.

The Londonderry Postman, Brendan Taggart, from Sevenoaks in the Waterside, kept undelivered mail in the back of his car for more than two months.

Taggart admitted to the charges for interfacing with and delaying the delivery of post at the city magistrates court on Thursday 8th July.

He also pleaded guilty to two charges of opening children’s birthday cards.

The offences were committed between May and August 2006 after Taggart’s (24) car was set on fire in an arson attack at Norburgh Park Foyle Springs in the city. The car was found to contain bundles of undelivered mail.

The police found the mail bags and reported the situation to the Royal Mail management at the sorting office in Derry.

Taggart made admissions when he was questioned by his superior officers.

The Royal Mail fired Taggart as a result of his actions. The District Judge sentenced him to a four-months in jail and suspended for three years, saying that no one would ever know the disruption Taggart had caused to people’s lives.

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Royal Mail’s income from customer penalty fees rocketed to 50 per cent after it created mass confusion by changing the way it charges for letters.

In August 2006 the organisation moved to a system of charging based on the size rather than the simple system of sticking on a first or second class stamp.

Many customers were finding that their Christmas and Birthday Cards weren’t being delivered as expected.

In response people received unexpected warning notices telling them that letter with underpaid postage would have to be collected from a sorting office.

These customers not only had to cover the underpaid postage - which was often just a few pence - but were also hit with a £1 administration charge.  

Concerns were raised by consumer groups who suspected that the charge was far too high and amounted to blatant profiteering.

The figures obtained by the Daily Mail using a Freedom of Information request confirmed that the organisation did cash in on the confusion created in charging.

And the total income from this source rose by 49 per cent in the year after the change came into effect - taking it up too £14.8 million in 2007/08 and then £16.5 million in 2008/09.

A break down of how many letters were surcharged was not provided by the Post Office but it is believed that at least 20 million were involved.

The new system has caused particular disruption around Christmas because a huge number of festive cards - as well as birthday cards - fell foul of the sizing rules.

Long queues formed outside the sorting offices as people lined up to pay penalty fees and underpaid postage in order to get a card from their loved ones.

Details about the income from the charges is being kept a secret.

The figures were first asked for in the run-up to Christmas 2008 by The Daily Mail. The Royal Mail repeatedly refused so the Daily Mail made a request under the Freedom of Information Act. The appeal was again refused claiming the information was commercially confidential.

19 months later and following a successful appeal to the Office of the Information Commissioner Royal Mail has been forced to hand over the details.

The official customer body, Consumer-Focus, has questioned the £1 fee is a fair reflection of the actual costs suffered by Royal Mail when it expects the customer to come and collect their letter.

A spokesman said, “We have questioned Royal Mail on how they arrive at the £1 cost and also on the volume of mail that this applies to.

“Unfortunately only Royal Mail will be able to give you answers to these questions as we are not allowed to go public with this information.”

The official customer body, Consumer-Focus, has questioned whether the £1 fee is a fair reflection of the actual costs suffered by Royal Mail when it expects a customer to come and collect a letter.

Royal Mail said, “Royal Mail does not make a profit from the administration fee involved in the collection of underpaid mail as the fee simply reflects the extra work involved.

“If there was no system to collect unpaid postage, it is very likely tat the current tiny fraction of mail with no or underpaid postage on it would increase significantly - at a cost to all other customers who pay the correct postage.”

Royal Mail did admit that the administration fee charged to businesses which underpay on outgoing mail amounts to 20p an item. However they charge customers five times more.

It said that this was justified because of the extra work involved. “The extra work includes sorting underpaid letters and separating them form the rest of the post, informing customers through a card delivered to their address about the underpaid item, storing the item for up to three weeks until it is collected, and then returning the item to the sender free of charge…if it is not collected,” it said.

So to save yourself the worry why not send all your birthday cards and Christmas cards with ecards.co.uk. The free to use website allows you to personalise birthday cards for your friends and loved ones then send them over via email.

For more information visit ecards.co.uk.

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At ecards.co.uk we are all about celebrating people’s birthday’s and what better birthday to celebrate than the famous Etch A Sketch toy we have all owned.

Over 100 million of the toys have sold worldwide since it first went on sale in the US on July 12 1960 for just $2.99.

“Etch A Sketch is a mum’s favourite toy. Children can be creative on any level with it and it requires no instruction,” said Larry Kilgallon of the Ohio Art Company, who have manufactured the toy since its inception.

“It doesn’t take batteries and makes no noise, and it is a toy that we can all relate to from our own childhoods.”

Its appearance and popularity remain more or less unchanged since the Etch A Sketch was first created by French inventor Arthur Granjean.

Now the toy is sold in the UK by Mattel at £14.99 and has fast become one of the world’s most popular toys, earning it a place in the exclusive US Toy Hall of Fame along with only 43 other classic toys.

In an increasingly technological toy market, the original Etch A Sketch, with its iconic red frame, continues to hold its own amongst the likes of the Nintendo DS.

In fact, the timeless toy - named one of the century’s top toys in 2008 - has seen a 20 per cent rise in worldwide sales this year.

This lasting success can possibly be attributed to the recent attention given to Toy Story 1 and 2 in the run-up to this month’s release of Toy Story 3, although it is revealed in the much anticipated third film that Etch has since been sold.

Toy retailer, Toys R Us said that they have “consistently supported the classic Etch A Sketch as it has always been a popular seller because of its timeless appeal.”

The world’s largest Etch A Sketch, unveiled only two months ago, is a staggering 8ft by 6fy and resides in the Indianapolis museum of childhood.

If you are looking to send a birthday card to your loved ones then why not send it for free at ecards.co.uk. The website has thousands of fabulous birthday cards online that you can easily email over when you sign up online today.

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