As a species, humans have a huge fascination with the past and the future. Time is such a huge theme in so many of our movies, our books, our songs, and our cultures.
For hundreds of years, folks have been creating little time capsules for people in the future to discover. Some of our founding fathers even gathered some small mementos from their time here on earth and placed them in a container to be discovered by their country's future residents.
Sometimes the person who left the item from the past intended for someone to open it in a certain amount of years, publicly displaying the capsule and setting a specific date to see what's inside. Other times, though, a time capsule is open-ended, or even left there by accident. Those are sometimes the most fun to find, even if there is just a simple note from the past waiting there to be discovered. Sometimes, the best discovery wasn't ever meant to be a time capsule to begin with, just a little piece of history that waited for you to find it.
Have you ever found a relic from the past or been present for an official opening of a time capsule? Let us know in the comments.
And please SHARE these pieces of the past with your family and friends on Facebook!
Thumbnail source: Flickr
1. Trick Whiskey Bottle, 1944 – 2015
Folks in Lebanon, NH, found an old whiskey-bottle time capsule with a lone penny inside, along with a note from a city surveyor named Samuel Stevens, apologizing for not leaving any of the whiskey behind. A cruel joke! He also hinted that he hid other time-capsule bottles around the town to be found years later, but none have been unearthed. Perhaps that is the bigger joke: townsfolk digging all over the place in search of more whiskey bottles from the past.
2. U.S. "Century Safe," 1876 – 1976
On the 100th anniversary of the United States Of America, New York magazine publisher Anna Deihm put together one of the first-known time capsules in the country. In it were some mementos like a gold fountain pen, a book on temperance, and snapshots of the President of the time, Ulysses S. Grant. The capsule was stowed away at the U.S. Capitol, and it was almost forgotten. Luckily, it was accidentally discovered shortly before it was time to open it in 1976.
3. Message In A Time Capsule, 1971 – 2015
At age 14, a man in Scotland threw a note in a bottle out to sea. Fourty-four years later, a couple from Australia was searching for beach treasures when they stumbled upon it. They found the man who tossed the bottle, Raymond Davidson, then in his 50s. Davidson didn't even remember tossing the bottle into the water! But this little piece of recent history made these tourists' day, and it brought complete strangers together. Isn't that what a time capsule is all about, to make you think about people in different times and places than our own?
4. An Entire Paris Apartment, 1942 – 2010
This time capsule came about as a matter of circumstance, and it's bigger than many of the others on this list: it's an entire apartment! In 1942, actress and socialite Madame de Florian fled the Nazis and left her entire apartment behind. She kept paying for it for 70 years, so it remained completely intact. When she died at the age of 91, her descendants discovered it untouched and filled with treasures, including a painting that sold for over $2.2 million, and a stuffed ostrich.
5. Boston State House Lion, 1901 – 2014
In 2014, a conservator had the chance to see if the rumor was true: was there really a time capsule hidden in the lion's head? When he took the statue down, he discovered a box with newspaper clippings and photographs inside, along with a Roosevelt McKinley button and a piece from the original wooden lion.
6. Opera Vault, 1907 – 2007
At the beginning of the century, a group of men gathered underneath the Paris Opera House and stowed away 24 original opera recordings in lead and iron time capsules. They wanted to give the folks of the future a taste of what vocal techniques sounded like at the time. Half of the archive was broken into and stolen somewhere along the line, with the rest being re-discovered during the installation of an air-conditioning unit. Finally, in 2007, the rest were opened and moved to the National Library of France.
7. Helium Time Column, 1968 – 1993, 2018, 2068, and 2968.
Each of the columns, filled with helium, represents a different theme of time. The one opened in 1993 represented our dependence on natural resources. The one to be opened 50 years after the sealing represents industry and the use of natural resources. The 100-year capsule represents science and the development of natural resources, as well as the human effort to conserve the earth.
What would you think if you were there to open any of these incredible pieces of history? Have you ever buried or opened a time capsule? Let us know in the comments, and please SHARE with your family and friends on Facebook!
