27 Most Amazing Time Capsules (28 photos)

In high school, many of us had the opportunity to create a time capsule. It may not have seemed like a big deal at the time, but when we opened it decades later, we were overcome with nostalgia. The collection features not only memorabilia and letters, but also more meaningful artifacts from a bygone era.





1. A time capsule was laid during the 1970 Tokyo World's Fair



First opened in 2000, it will be filled with new items every 100 years to reflect changes in Japanese culture.

2. "Memory of Humanity" (Mom) - a project aimed at preserving accumulated knowledge from oblivion and collective amnesia





The information is printed on ceramic tablets and stored in the salt mine of Hallstatt, Austria.

3. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Time Capsule at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., 1988



The capsule is scheduled to be opened in 2088. It contains the civil rights leader's belongings, as well as audio tapes.

4. Time capsule found during construction on the MIT campus



The capsule was sealed by MIT President James Killian and Professor Harold Edgerton in 1957.

5. Lucasfilm's 1981 Time Capsule



On July 4, 1981, George Lucas buried a time capsule at the opening of Skywalker Ranch in California. It officially ushered in a new era for Lucasfilm and celebrated the company's 10th anniversary. The capsule is filled with Star Wars-themed memorabilia.

6. Samuel Adams and Paul Revere Time Capsule



In 1795, Massachusetts Governor Samuel Adams and American Revolutionary hero Paul Revere sealed a message to posterity in a cornerstone of the Capitol. The artifact was only discovered in 2014.

7. Various items from the Westinghouse Time Capsule created for the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.



The capsule was hidden at a depth of 15 m in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, New York, next to it is another cache from 1939. According to the plan, they will survive 5000 years and will be opened in the 7th millennium AD.

8. The Library of the Future is an art project, the goal of which is to collect fresh manuscripts of writers for 100 years. The works will remain unread and unpublished until 2114



In 2014, a thousand spruce trees were planted north of Oslo, exactly one hundred years later they will be used for paper for books.

9. Voyager Golden Records



Gold-plated informational records with compositions and sounds of the Earth. Attached to the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, which have been exploring the solar system since 1977, the case features explanations for an extraterrestrial civilization, a phonograph capsule, and a needle for playing the recording.

10. The World's Largest Time Capsule



The 45-ton vault in Seward, Nebraska, holds about 5,000 relics and memorabilia. Businessman Harold Keith Davisson sealed it in 1975 to be opened exactly 50 years later, on July 4, 2025.

11. John Brashear's Time Capsule



On August 14, 1894, Brashear hid a small metal box under a cornerstone of the Astronomical and Physical Instruments Factory. In 2015, the capsule was retrieved and found to contain photographs of Brashear, his wife Phoebe (with the caption "my dear girl"), his staff and equipment, a lock of Phoebe's hair, business correspondence, and a small piece of glass with the inscription "One of the first examples of optical glass made in America."

12. Nickelodeon capsule



It features items that Nickelodeon viewers thought were especially important to kids in 1992: a Barbie doll, a baseball, books (comics, phone books, TV Guide, and a world atlas), chewing gum, compact discs (MC Hammer and Michael Jackson), news reports (the collapse of the Soviet Union, the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS, and Operation Desert Storm), a Nintendo Game Boy, pencils, photographs of things too big to fit inside (bicycles, cars, planes, and trains), Reebok Pump sneakers, roller skates, a skateboard, a Ren and Stimpy T-shirt, and VHS movies (Back to the Future and Home Alone).

13. The Crypt of Civilization - the world's first full-fledged time capsule, Oglethorpe University, Georgia, USA, 1939



14. Tesla Monument in Silicon Valley



A 30-year time capsule containing items such as an iPhone and a 2013 cent was sealed at the monument's opening ceremony. But what will probably interest future people the most are the letters - predictions from local children about what the year 2043 will be like.

15. The Wall Street time capsule was opened a century later in 2014



16. A time capsule in British Columbia containing records from 1966-1967.



The capsule was laid in Confederation Park on December 31, 1967, and is scheduled to open on January 1, 2067, to celebrate Canada's bicentennial.

17. In 2014, during the restoration of the golden lion statues installed on the roof of the Old State House in Boston, a 1901 box was found



18. Steve Jobs' capsule



A mouse from an Apple Lisa computer, a Rubik's cube, and cassette tapes with music by the British rock band Moody Blues were found in a 1983 cache.

19. Macau Time Capsule



Symbolizes the reaffirmation of the promise to maintain Macau's autonomy for fifty years. The capsule contains the Joint Declaration of China and Portugal on the Macau Question, the Basic Law of the Macau Special Administrative Region.

20. Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages



In 1969, the first astronauts to set foot on the Moon left behind a small silicon disk, 3.8 cm in diameter, with goodwill messages from leaders and representatives of 73 nations.

21. Sir John Forrest and other dignitaries attended the laying of the foundation stone for the Perth Observatory on September 29, 1896. The lead box containing the valuables was hidden at the same time



The event received wide coverage in the local press and is worth mentioning because the cache contained X-ray tubes, a description of the process, and photographs of the samples. This is the first known capsule in Australian history.

22. The Cross in Montreal, Quebec, Canada



Next to the structure is a plaque indicating the location where a time capsule was buried in 1992 during the celebration of Montreal's 350th anniversary. It contains messages and drawings from 12,000 children depicting their vision of the city in 2142.

23. "Immortality Disc"



In 2008, an "immortality disc" was delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) - a digital storage device containing information about the most important achievements of mankind and the DNA structure of famous people, such as physicist Stephen Hawking, comedian and talk show host Stephen Colbert, Playboy model Joe Garcia, programmer Richard Garriott, and professional wrestler Matt Morgan.

24. Lageos-1 Satellite



LAGEOS-1 was launched by NASA in 1976 and is expected to re-enter the atmosphere in 8.4 million years. Inside it is a plaque with information for the future of humanity.

At the top left is an image of the LAGEOS-1 satellite. It is followed by the numbers 1 through 10 in binary code and a diagram showing the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Below the diagram is the number 1, which represents a unit of time (1 year) for the diagrams that follow. The arrow pointing to the right in the Earth's orbit represents the chosen direction of the time scale (past on the left, future on the right). Below are three maps of the Earth - showing the location of the continents about 270 million years ago, their location at the time of launch, and the estimated location of the continents 8.4 million years after launch. Below the first figure is a number in binary code - a one followed by 28 zeros (in decimal code it is equal to 268,435,456), and an arrow pointing to the left, which is supposed to mean "before the launch of the satellite". Below the second figure is a zero (i.e. the present on the time scale), and the location from which the satellite was launched is marked on the map. The third drawing has the number 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 written underneath it (which is 8,388,608 in decimal notation). This drawing is a schematic of a satellite falling to Earth.

25. Miss Belvedere - a Plymouth Belvedere that was sealed in a concrete vault on the Tulsa City Courthouse grounds on June 15, 1957, as a 50-year time capsule



The capsule was opened in 2007 during the state's centennial celebration. The vault was capable of withstanding a nuclear strike, but not the flood that destroyed Miss Belvedere.

26. In 1995, to celebrate Disneyland's 40th anniversary, a time capsule was laid to give future visitors a glimpse into the past



It contains photographs, newspapers, and other memorabilia. It is scheduled to open on the park's 80th anniversary in 2035.

27. The Yahoo! Project Time Capsule



This project allowed users to contribute to the creation of an "anthropology of human life in 2006." The collected information was planned to be launched into space from a Mexican pyramid using a laser to establish contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. The total number of messages sent was 170,857.