concord to the International Time Capsule Society at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta , there are approximately 10,000 clock time capsule in the earth . Unfortunately , they also estimate that no one remembers where 9,000 of them are buried . Here ’s what befall to seven of these lost collection .
1. State secret
Even though most time capsules take niggling of pecuniary value , there ’s always that fortune that someone will deface or damage them just to be a jerk . The City of Wilkinsburg , Pennsylvania , developed an ingenious plan to foreclose such vandalism when they decided to inter a clock time ejection seat in 1962 . They elected a special citizens committee to decide where the capsule should be sink and were then learn to keep the localization a enigma . The adult male preserve their discussion all right — perhaps a little too well .
Twenty - five age subsequently , when the capsule was supposed to be dig out up for the city ’s 100th anniversary in 1987 , almost all of the committee member had died and none had pass on the time capsule ’s secret fix . Only one member of the committee was still alive , and he could n’t think back where it was . To this twenty-four hour period , the capsule is still hidden somewhere underneath the city .
2. Lost in space?
To immortalize the fifth anniversary of their San Diego home base , General Dynamics Astronautics place a time capsule inside a concrete hurdle in 1963 . Inside the space capsule was a small book titled2063 A.D. , named for the twelvemonth they stand for to recollect the capsule . The Word of God was a series of interviews with politician , military personnel , and those in the blank program , offer civilize predictions about lifespan 100 years in the future .
For example , Brigadier General Irving Branch ( USAF ) , suggested the moon would have a universe of 100,000 by 2063 ; Mars ' colony would be a quaint town of only 10,000 . John Glenn thought we would have an anti - gravity rocket propulsion system of rules that would take us further into space than we could even imagine possible . And then - Vice President Lyndon Johnson felt man would be capable to control the weather , have the capableness for global communications , and that commutes between place stations and planets would be an mundane event .
unluckily , when the General Dynamics construction was bust down in the late-1990s , the time capsule could not be establish and has been presumed destroyed . But all is not lost — the forward - mind of 1963 had the lustrous theme of printing around 200 written matter of2063 A.D.and distributing them to select universities all over the United States .
3. Signed, sealed, not delivered
The Bicentennial Wagon Train of 1976 consisted of 50 horse - draw wagons , one for each commonwealth , travel across the country following the traditional police wagon trails that led the groundbreaker out West . Only this sentence , the travelers were go in the opposite focus — from the West Coast , back to Valley Forge , Pennsylvania , where they would take part in a huge bicentenary solemnisation . Along the way , passing through towns big and little , they collected the signatures of a describe 22 million Americans . These signature were placed inside a sentence capsule to be buried at a ceremonial presided over by President Gerald Ford himself . However , moment before the big case , it was happen upon that the capsule had been stolen from the back of the van , never to be seen again .
4. Resurfacing
Every once in a while , a supposedly long - lost time capsule will crop up again — like one of the two capsule that were imagine to be buried in 1953 as part of the centennial celebration of the Washington Territory ( now the Department of State of Washington ) . While the big abridgment was interred as planned , the smaller one was inexplicably go away in a 5th floor storage room of the commonwealth Capitol building . It had been backpack away inside a nondescript crate and would probably still be there today were it not for an seism that damage the Capitol in 2001 . While clean out the storehouse way , workers take the lead container held former mimeograph fluid . As they began to haul the crateful out of the room , they noticed writing on the side that severalise them what they had really ground .
In a risky move , the capsule was placed back into computer memory at another facility until the mending to the Capitol building were completed . All run smoothly this metre around , and the capsule was at last swallow next to its big brother on the Capitol grounds in 2005 . To assure this character of thing does n’t happen again when the capsules are theorise to be opened in 2053 , a small face brass was placed on the spot where they ’re buried , and a document describing the location was post to the state ’s archive in both Olympia and Cheney , Washington .
5. Repeat offenders
The city of Corona , California , hold the all - time phonograph recording for prison term capsules fall back by one organization . As part of Corona ’s 1985 Labor Day solemnization , 17 metre capsules bury since the thirties by local high schoolhouse classes were meant to be remember . City doer begin tearing up the concrete around civil hall where the first capsule was thought to be , but they came up empty . So they tried the next dapple . Nothing . In all they dug 17 holes , buck up a lot of concrete , and found zero time capsules .
6. Photo proof
In 1991 , officials retrieve it would be a in force thought to indicate the situation of the abridgment with a marking as part of the dam ’s fiftieth anniversary . There was just one problem : no one knew precisely where the abridgment was any longer . They did think that a plaque describing the location of the capsule had been beam to the state Capitol for safe - keeping — but no one at the Capitol building had ever seen or heard of such a plaque . Almost out of ideas , they take off looking through the dekametre ’s archive and discovered the photos from the ceremony , let in the one of the two girl cutting the palm . Thanks to the photographic evidence , they were finally capable to track down the location of the capsule and put a sign on top .
7. It ain’t rocket science
