There is something genuinely thrilling about a sealed box sitting quietly underground while the world above it keeps spinning. Time capsules are supposed to be windows into the past, tidy little snapshots of everyday life lovingly prepared for curious people in the future. Newspapers, coins, maybe a handwritten letter. That’s the idea, anyway.
Except humans are weird. Wonderfully, magnificently weird. Across centuries and continents, people have stuffed time capsules with items that range from the touching to the absolutely baffling. Fake bombs, decade-old cake, a human fingernail, and an empty whiskey bottle with a punchline inside. Let’s dive in.
A Fake Bomb Full of Party Memories
In the summer of 2017, construction workers in Manhattan unearthed what looked like an undetonated World War II-era bomb. Police shut down the street to investigate and, to everyone’s relief, discovered it wasn’t a real bomb at all. It was just a time capsule. Honestly, that is one of the most New York sentences ever written.
The office building had once been the site of the famous New York dance club Danceteria. Organizers bought the fake missile in the mid-1980s and had clubgoers fill it with letters and other eclectic items during a party. Among the remembered contents were Diana Ross’s fake eyelash, a G-string, and a paper mâché boob. High art. Truly.
A 71-Year-Old Joke in a Whiskey Bottle
In 2015, a time capsule was uncovered in Lebanon, New Hampshire, hidden under the stairs of City Hall. It was from 1944 and consisted mainly of a whiskey bottle. The bottle held a note which read: “Whoever finds this bottle may keep it. Sorry there is no liquor in it, but I drank it all up.” The note was left by Samuel Stevens, who had worked as a city surveyor for the town.
The capsule also contained some old newspapers and a penny, but the decades-old joke was definitely the highlight. Honestly, Stevens deserves some kind of posthumous award. Setting up a punchline with a 71-year delay requires a very particular kind of commitment to comedy. I think most of us can only dream of that level of patience.
A Human Fingernail Destined for the Year 6970
Osaka, Japan was home to a 1970 World Expo, and for the occasion they built a carefully designed capsule intended to be opened 5,000 years in the future. They also included a “control” capsule that was opened in the year 2000 to check on the state of the items inside. Each capsule holds over 2,000 items, and one of them is a fingernail from one of the survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bombing that took place in 1945.
The items inside the two capsules also include a collection of seeds, metals and textiles; microfilm and newsreels; and everyday items such as a Beatles record, a bikini, a pack of Camel cigarettes and a plastic child’s cup featuring Mickey Mouse. There is something quietly profound about placing a Hiroshima survivor’s fingernail next to a Beatles record and a bikini. It captures the full range of what it meant to be human in the twentieth century in one sealed container.
Steve Jobs’s Mouse, Lost Underground for Decades
In 1983, Steve Jobs spoke at an Aspen, Colorado conference and donated an Apple Lisa mouse to be included in a time capsule being buried in the area, scheduled to be unearthed in the year 2000. But when the time came to open it, the location had become ambiguous because of construction and landscaping in the region. Experts from the National Geographic series “Diggers” eventually found the capsule in 2013.
As the years passed, the actual location of the time capsule was forgotten and it was unable to be opened on its intended date. Think about that for a second. One of the most significant objects in tech history, a mouse that helped define the personal computing revolution, spent over two decades lost beneath a Colorado field. The future arrived and nobody could find the thing. There is a certain poetic irony in that.
A Whole Car Buried Underground in Tulsa
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, officials settled on burying a Plymouth Belvedere two-door sedan as a time capsule, scheduled for disinterment after 50 years. A contest had locals predict the city’s 2007 population, with the lucky heir of the closest guesser winning the car and a $100 savings bond. The car was sprayed with a preservative, wrapped in plastic and set in a concrete vault. Road trip supplies filled the trunk, including gasoline, oil and beer. The glove compartment held hairpins, a makeup compact, a plastic rain cap, chewing gum, cigarettes, a bottle of tranquilizers, $2.73 in cash and unpaid parking tickets.
Those fears were realized when the car was found sitting in four feet of water in 2007. The great 1957 time capsule experiment ended in soggy disappointment. The unpaid parking tickets survived though, so that’s something. Let’s be real, it’s very on-brand for a car full of tranquilizers to wind up underwater after fifty years.
A Piece of 1948 Cake That Nobody Should Eat
When the owners of a Niagara Falls funeral home uncovered a time capsule from 1948 while doing renovations, they were probably expecting standard items. They did find newspaper clippings, letters and postcards, but there was one thing included that isn’t exactly part of your basic time capsule formula: a piece of cake. They guessed that it might have been a slice of cake from the opening party for the building, but we can’t know its origins for sure.
A piece of cake buried in a building’s walls for over seventy years. It is both disgusting and fascinating in equal measure. It is the kind of thing that makes you wonder whether the people who buried it thought it was charming or whether they just had leftover dessert and no better ideas. Either way, it survived longer than most birthday parties.
An Artillery Shell That Someone Had Already Raided
Volunteers at an American Legion post in Arlington, Washington decided that an artillery shell sitting in the lobby should probably get secured. They were surprised to find that the shell was actually a time capsule from 1934. They were also surprised to find that someone had already gotten to it first. Whoever had done so left a note simply saying: “Thank you for the brandy.”
There were plenty of other items in the shell, including a trove of documents, magazines, a menu from a local hotel, and a trench lighter from World War I. The unknown brandy thief remains one of history’s most likeable criminals. They got in, drank the good stuff, left a polite thank-you note, and vanished into history. Whoever you were, well done.
Soviet Youth Letters Written to the Future
On July 15, 2012, people uncovered a time capsule underneath a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Vulkanny, Russia. It had been left there by a Soviet Komsomol youth organization on July 15, 1979, and was coincidentally found exactly 33 years later. It was apparently common practice to bury time capsules under statues of Lenin during this period.
The contents were addressed to the “socialist society in 2024,” so clearly it was opened earlier than intended. The message inside was an optimistic one, expressing that surely future societies would be better off than the one in which the letter was written. There is something quietly heartbreaking about that. Young Soviet citizens writing hopefully to a future that turned out very differently from what they imagined. It is hard to say for sure what they expected, but whatever it was, they believed things would improve.
Artificial Eyelashes Inside the Crypt of Civilization
Inside the famous Crypt of Civilization, buried in 1940 and intended to be opened in the year 8113, there is a set of artificial eyelashes. Apparently, they were included to showcase 20th-century fashion trends. Now, think about that opening date. 8113. The people cracking that open will be separated from us by more time than separates us from ancient Egypt. And they will pull out a set of fake eyelashes.
The crypt includes many books, an original movie script of Gone with the Wind, seeds, a typewriter, a sewing machine, and some other high-tech gadgets of the era. The combination of a classic Hollywood screenplay and false eyelashes alongside a sewing machine is a strangely perfect portrait of mid-century America. It is messy, glamorous, practical, and a little absurd all at once, much like the era itself.
An Unpublished Dolly Parton Song Locked Until 2046
In 2015, Dolly Parton sealed a never-before-heard song, titled “My Place in History,” in a time capsule at Dollywood, her theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The plan is to keep it sealed until Parton’s 100th birthday in 2046. But in late 2022, the singer confessed that she was feeling a bit of burier’s remorse.
There is something uniquely poignant about an artist locking away a piece of their work that the world may never hear in their lifetime. Unlike a coin or a newspaper clipping, a song locked in a vault feels alive somehow. It is waiting to be played, to make someone feel something. Meanwhile, across the world, a roughly 12-by-16-inch purple box filled with BTS memorabilia sits at the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, unveiled in 2021 and set to be reopened on the 20th Youth Day in 2039. From K-pop to country, the world’s biggest artists are quietly freezing moments of their work in time. What a strange and beautiful instinct that is.
Time capsules are, at their core, acts of faith. Faith that someone in the future will care, that the box will survive, and that what felt significant to us will mean something to them. Sometimes people leave behind coins and letters. Sometimes they leave eyelashes, cake, and empty whiskey bottles with a joke inside. What would you put in yours?
