The time capsule was sealed away with great pomp, and Princess Diana herself was in attendance.
It was to remain in its tomb for hundreds of years, to be marveled at one day by the humans of the future, or perhaps their new A.I. overlords.
Instead it has been dug up and opened after just 34 years.
The lead-lined wooden box, encased in the wall at the front entrance of Great Ormond Street Hospital in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London in 1991, had its expected timeline shortened drastically after the hospital decided to build a new children’s cancer center.
So it was duly removed this year and opened to reveal a curious mix of items from the early 1990s chosen by two children who had won a national competition.
The items, which the hospital disclosed this week, included the expected: a copy of The London Times newspaper and a photograph of Princess Diana.
The mundane: a passport, coins, tree seeds.
The cool at the time, but now a trifle dated: a solar-powered calculator, a pocket television, a hologram, recycled paper.
And one item representing the dawn of the ’90s in such an on-the-nose way that its inclusion seems to have been scripted by a snarky 2025 comedy writer: a CD of the album “Rhythm of Love” by Kylie Minogue.
But the new hospital construction meant that future humans would sadly not get to dance to “Better the Devil You Know.” (And that’s assuming they would know what to do with a CD anyway; many of today’s teenagers don’t.)
The items, some of which were damaged by moisture, will be restored and saved by the hospital. A new time capsule is under development, a hospital spokeswoman said.
It is not the first time capsule to have, as the British say, come a cropper.
This capsule echoed one placed at the same hospital in 1872 by the Princess of Wales at that time, Alexandra, the great-great grandmother of King Charles. That time capsule, the hospital grimly reports, “has never been found.”
Many time capsules vanish. Others are just forgotten. Some are dug up amid great excitement only to turn out to be empty or filled with damaged artifacts or just junk.
What fascinated the people of the past may stultify folks in the future. A 50-year-old time capsule unearthed in Southern California in 2022 and found to contain trinkets and pamphlets was proclaimed by The Long Beach Post to be “the most boring time capsule in history.” “The box featured a lot of things I have in my garage,” the reporter, Tim Grobaty, wrote.
“Disappointment is the most common response to time capsule openings.” Nick Yablon, a professor and expert on time capsules, told The New York Times in 2014 when discussing one of the world’s oldest time capsules, whose “highlights” included a 1914 telegram from the governor of New York.
On a brighter note, a mysterious box discovered at West Point that was opened live on YouTube in 2023 at first appeared to be filled only with dirt, but was later found to have some silver coins from the 1800s.
Even The Times got in on the act in 1999, placing a fancy capsule designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava at the American Museum of Natural History after featuring it on the cover of The Times Magazine.
It included a recording of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a Purple Heart, a cellphone and, of course, the faddest of ’90s fads, a Beanie Baby.
The capsule was supposed to rest in its home until the year 3000. But the museum decided to build a new science center, and the steel capsule was in the way. It was removed in 2018 and at last word was in storage in Connecticut.
Victor Mather, who has been a reporter and editor at The Times for 25 years, covers sports and breaking news.
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