Damned clumsy time travelers. 😉
(“Anachronous” is probably a better term for this than the writer realized.)
I’ve confirmed that the article isn’t a hoax, at least — it really was reported, and discussed pretty widely at the time. Whether the watch is or not is an open question. A cursory glance at the Google results doesn’t show any resolution to the mystery.
I knew cell phones made the wrist-watch obsolete, but this is ridiculous!
It’s hard to make sense of the Google translation that I saw, but it seemed to say that the “ring” was meant to be carried on a chain or ribbon of some kind, rather than worn on a finger. It also dated its manufacture at about a century ago, which put it before the advent of the first actual wristwatch (which was apparently in the 1930s or some such).
Someone also mentioned a possible solution to the mystery: that some animals (including rats) have been known to carry off small pieces of jewelry. It could very well have been left there by an animal sometime in the last hundred years, though that’s a much less exciting explanation than a clumsy time-traveler.