Not every time capsule boasts paper mâché body parts or decades-old tTwinkies, but they’re all fascinating in their own ways.
We’re uncovering some of history’s best and most baffling examples—found everywhere from space to Salt Lake City—as adapted from the above episode of The List Show on YouTube.
- The Danceteria Time Capsule
- The Voyager Spacecrafts’ Golden Records
- The Time Capsule in a Giant Axe
- The Time Capsule in Cleopatra’s Needle
- The Crypt of Civilization
- America’s Oldest Time Capsule
- The Nickelodeon Time Capsule
- The National Millennium Time Capsule
- Detroit’s Century Box
- Salt Lake City’s 1959 Time Capsule
- Dana Point, California’s Time Capsule
- The National Museum of Korean Contemporary History’s BTS Time Capsule
- The Star Wars Time Capsule
- Dollywood’s Time Capsule
- The Future Library
- Smithtown, Long Island’s 50-Year-Old Can of Milk Capsule
- Derry, New Hampshire’s Empty Time Capsule Mystery
The Danceteria Time Capsule
In the summer of 2017, construction workers unearthed what looked like an undetonated World War II-era bomb in an office building on Manhattan’s 21st Street. Police shut down the street to investigate and, to everyone’s relief, discovered it wasn’t a real bomb. It was just a time capsule.
The office building had once been a 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. Former owner John Argento told NBC New York that “It was just an excuse to do a party. We forgot about it and went on to the next party.” As for what stuff made it into the time capsule, artist Marguerite Van Cook remembered Diana Ross’s fake eyelash, Chi Chi Valenti’s G-string, and a paper mâché boob.
The Voyager Spacecrafts’ Golden Records
If aliens ever encounter one of NASA’s two Voyager spacecrafts, launched in 1977, they’ll get to hear what Earth sounds like. Each craft carries what’s known as the Golden Record—phonograph records with audio of everything from laughter and rain to dogs barking and birds chirping. There’s also music from across the globe—Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” for one, and an aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The records contain images, too: a supermarket, a classroom, a house, and so on.
The Time Capsule in a Giant Axe
The town of Nackawic in New Brunswick, Canada, is home to the world’s largest axe. The steel behemoth is roughly 60 feet tall, weighs more than 15,000 pounds, and was built in 1991 to honor Nackawic’s selection as the Forestry Capital of Canada. Hidden in the head of the axe is a time capsule—though its contents are a mystery, and officials apparently never set a date to reopen it.
The Time Capsule in Cleopatra’s Needle
Another structure harboring a time capsule is Cleopatra’s Needle, a nearly-70-foot-tall granite obelisk that dates back to ancient Egypt circa 1450 BCE. A gift from Egypt to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal, it’s been in New York’s Central Park since 1881. Beneath the obelisk is a capsule containing a Bible, a guide to Egypt, a print of the Declaration of Independence, and all of William Shakespeare’s plays, among other things. But William Henry Hurlbert, the newspaper editor who facilitated the Needle’s big move, added a container of his own. Nobody knows what’s in it, and Central Park officials have no plans to find out.
The Crypt of Civilization
The Crypt of Civilization takes the unofficial title for coolest time capsule name. It’s an actual crypt—a 20-by-10-foot room beneath a building at Atlanta’s Oglethorpe University, where then-president Dr. Thornwell Jacobs conceived of the project in the 1930s. He wanted to preserve everything about civilization so in thousands of years people would have a comprehensive picture of past life on Earth. There are more than 640,000 pages of microfilm documents in the room, plus thousands of the most random things you can think of: a Donald Duck doll, soap shaped like a bull, a plastic flute. It was sealed in 1940 and won’t be reentered until 8113.
America’s Oldest Time Capsule
America’s oldest known time capsule was put together by a couple guys you’ve probably heard of: Paul Revere and Samuel Adams. The metal box, embedded in a cornerstone of the Massachusetts State House in 1795, was first unsealed in 1855 and then again in 2015. The most exciting contents included a coin dating back to the 1600s, a medal bearing a picture of George Washington, and a plaque that Revere himself may have engraved. It read: “This cornerstone of a building intended for the use of the legislative and executive branches of the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was laid by his Excellency Samuel Adams, Esquire, governor of the said Commonwealth.”
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The Nickelodeon Time Capsule
What did ’90s kids hold most dear? Their Nintendo Game Boy? A Home Alone VHS? A jar of Gak? Yes, yes, and yes, according to the Nickelodeon time capsule. It was filled with “the items and thoughts that were important to the kids of 1992” and buried at Nickelodeon Studios at Orlando’s Universal Studios in April of that year. Also inside are a few timeless classics—pencils, a baseball, a stick of bubble gum—and some Nickelodeon-specific memorabilia. A Ren & Stimpy T-shirt and an issue of Nickelodeon Magazine, for example. Also Twinkies and a chunk of the Berlin Wall. The capsule was relocated to Nickelodeon Animation Studio in California after Nickelodeon Studios shuttered, even after a private buyer purchased the original steel capsule cover in 2022, and it’s scheduled to stay shut until 2042.
The National Millennium Time Capsule
Twinkies were also submitted to the National Millennium Time Capsule, created by the Clinton administration in 2000 and set to be unsealed in 2100. The Washington State high schoolers who sent the Twinkies explained that the treat was “an enduring American icon,” according to The New York Times. But officials were worried about mice, so members of the organizing committee just ate them instead. What reportedly did make the cut were a pair of Ray Charles’s sunglasses, footage of the moon landing, a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, and more.
Detroit’s Century Box
Time capsule creators unsurprisingly love to wonder what the world will look like when their capsule gets reopened. When Detroiters unsealed the city’s Century Box on New Year’s Eve in 2000, they were treated to predictions made by Detroiters a hundred years earlier.
One person thought that by the year 2000 Ontario would be a U.S. state. Others assumed the U.S. would’ve annexed all of Canada. The police commission thought it would be transporting imprisoned people by “flying machines” or “pneumatic tubes” instead of automobiles. And one guy wrote that electricity would be powered by garbage, which unlike the other predictions, actually came true. However, the Detroit Resource Recovery Facility closed in 2019 after 30 years in operation.
Salt Lake City’s 1959 Time Capsule
Salt Lake City leaders fared slightly better in predictions for the year 2000 that they sealed in a 1959 time capsule. One newspaper manager imagined newspapers “printed right in the subscriber[s’] homes by means of electronic transmission and reproduction,” plus a “sound-producing machine” that read articles aloud. University of Utah president Albert Ray Olpin anticipated TVs “in the form of wall panels” in classrooms and the majority of rooms in residential homes. A Western Airlines exec envisioned mail delivered by radio-controlled missiles and rockets—not a far cry from today’s drones. But one retail manager got a little ahead of himself when picturing 21st-century fashion. Nobody would wear neckties anymore, and “Woven into our summer clothing will be coils for cooling.”
Dana Point, California’s Time Capsule
In a 1966 time capsule buried in Dana Point, California, meanwhile, someone asked if TV would “ … continue its irritating commercials on the quality of soaps, deodorant, toothpaste, cigarettes, etc” in 2016. Another person mentioned seeing “near-nudity” on beaches and streets in 1966.
The National Museum of Korean Contemporary History’s BTS Time Capsule
The National Museum of Korean Contemporary History currently plays host to a roughly 12-by-16-inch purple box filled with BTS memorabilia. The K-pop supergroup unveiled the time capsule in 2021 for South Korea’s very first Youth Day, and it’s set to be reopened on the 20th Youth Day in 2039. By that point the stans won’t exactly be youths anymore.
The Star Wars Time Capsule
Star Wars stans have a time capsule, too. In 1981, the 3-foot-long container was installed in a cornerstone of the main building at Skywalker Ranch, the then-new headquarters of George Lucas’s production company Lucasfilm. In it are Star Wars action figures, a 17-minute reel of scenes from The Empire Strikes Back, paperback editions of The Art of Star Wars and The Art of The Empire Strikes Back, and paperweights etched with the words Star Wars and May the Force Be With You. Also a ton of other items, from a bottle of wine to an R2-D2 wind-up toy.
Dollywood’s Time Capsule
In 2015, Dolly Parton sealed a never-before-heard song, “My Place in History,” in a time capsule at Dollywood, her theme park and resort 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. “I wanna go dig that up so bad,” she said on The Kelly Clarkson Show, “ … it’s a really good song.”
The Future Library
Parton isn’t the only person with unseen work locked in a vault. A room at Oslo’s public library houses Future Library, a project launched in 2014 by visual artist Katie Paterson. Every year, she adds an unpublished manuscript written by a contemporary author. They’ll be published in 2114 using wood from 1000 spruces planted specifically for the task. So far, contributors have included Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Elif Shafak, Han Kang, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Tommy Orange, and more.
Smithtown, Long Island’s 50-Year-Old Can of Milk Capsule
Not all time capsules live up to expectations. For Smithtown, Long Island’s 350th birthday in 2015, officials clad in colonial costumes cracked open a milk can that the town had buried 50 years prior. Contents included some pennies, a phone book, a white bonnet, a black hat, and a bunch of documents.
Kiernan Lannon, executive director of the Smithtown Historical Society, told Newsday that “The most interesting thing that came out of the time capsule was the smell. It was horrible. I have smelled history before; history does not smell like that. It was the most powerfully musty smell that I’ve ever smelled in my life.”
Derry, New Hampshire’s Empty Time Capsule Mystery
But even a rotten smell is better than nothing at all. That’s what happened in Derry, New Hampshire, in 2019. Nutfield, a community including Derry and two other towns, had filled a time capsule for its 250th birthday celebration back in 1969. Officials followed the directive to open the safe in 50 years’ time, only to find it completely empty. Library director Cara Potter told WMUR that the discovery left them “a little horrified.”
The combination was written on the back of the safe, so anybody could’ve stolen its contents between 1969 and 2019. But there’s more to this mystery than meets the eye. For one thing, photos from the 1969 event show that the capsule wasn’t a safe—it was a long cylindrical canister. For another, newspaper reports said it was buried in nearby MacGregor Park—but an organizer left a letter explaining that future organizers would find it in the town hall’s basement.
It’s possible that the contents of the original canister were transferred to a safe when the town hall got demolished, and the safe was then stored in the library. There’s also a wooden plaque with the safe dated 2001. In that case, where’s the stuff? Or maybe the original canister is still buried in MacGregor Park. But then what’s with the safe? Each theory raises more questions than it answers.