This week we have an incredibly old glass capsule that was smashed open in London, a grunge-era capsule unearthed at a Washington McDonald’s, and a huge new capsule in Florida that may shock you.
Taser sealed in Florida time capsule for 2064
An enormous new time capsule was sealed in Jacksonville, Florida this week containing an item that the people of 2064 may find shocking, if not a tad insensitive: a taser.
Rick Beseler, the sheriff of Clay County, Florida donated the taser, explaining that he’d like the people of the future to see what kinds of weapons we used. This may seem insensitive, given the fact that Beseler and the Clay County Sheriff’s Department are currently being sued in federal court over an inmate death in March of 2013 that involved a taser.
Deputies restrained Joseph Linsinbigler Jr. in a chair and proceeded to pepper spray him, place a bag over his head, and taser him. He was later found dead after screaming for help. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, though the Sheriff’s Office cleared the deputies involved of any wrongdoing. Linsinbigler’s estate is now suing.
Joining Beseler’s taser in the capsule will be everything from toy cars and children’s essays to ancient Native American pottery shards and a Civil War-era pipe. There was also a Florida punch-card election ballot from the notorious 2000 presidential recount.
The capsule also included plenty of personal letters which won’t be read until the year 2064, but you can read a public letter that was sealed with the items over at Jacksonville.com. Given news organisations’ difficulty with link-rot, the people of 5 years hence probably have a worse chance of reading it by following that link than the people of 50 years hence do by cracking open the time capsule. [Mayport Mirror]
Time capsule bottle from 1842 discovered near London
Construction workers doing renovation work on a building in London discovered an incredibly old time capsule bottle just outside London this past weekend. Documents in the glass bottle explained that it was sealed May 10, 1842, by the original architects and builders. And though the contents of the bottle are rather mundane — mostly handwritten documents including poems and proclamations — it’s not every week that we find a capsule this old. [This is Local London]
Mid-90s capsule cracked open in Washington unsurprisingly has Trolls
Roughly a dozen people showed up for the unearthing of that McDonald’s time capsule from 1994 we wrote about last week. And its contents were about what you’d expect for mid-90s kids: lots of children’s drawings, some Troll dolls, Happy Meal toys, and a floppy disk.
And for once, people weren’t terribly disappointed by what they found inside.
“I was tickled,” McDonald’s franchise owner Matt Hadwin told the local newspaper. “It was better stuff than I thought.” Hadwin says he plans to bury a new time capsule for future generations. [The Columbian]
Image: Florida postcard via PowerDNN