Let’s remember when a 50-year time capsule at UW was opened, after being tampered with by pranksters, on this day in 2007 (April 26)
There is something truly beautiful about this story, and hilarious. In fact, I’ve tried about a half dozen different opening paragraphs that I couldn’t get through without cracking up. I’ll just let the PI explain what happened.
As they cracked the capsule Thursday afternoon, University of Washington research team members expected to find a prim and proper package from the nifty 1950s.
What they got was a faceful of pornography, circa 1978, and dirty underwear.
The older, tamer items — snapshots of men with crew cuts, reel-to-reel recordings of School of Communications alumni cracking wise — still lay in the steel box, as they had since the capsule was sealed into the wall of the then-new Communications Building in 1957.
What???
On April 26, 2007, faculty members of the University of Washington Department of Communications open a time capsule that was sealed within the walls of the Communication Building in 1957. Attendees at the opening are surprised to find that in the early 1980s, pranksters had added some off-color items to the original contents.
The time capsule was implanted in the wall of the Communications Building soon after the building opened in 1957. Containing such objects as newspapers, textbooks, photographs of staff members, and reel-to-reel recordings of professors and former students, the capsule bore an inscription stating that it should be opened in 2007, during the one hundredth anniversary of the first journalism classes, which were held at the university in 1907.
The box was sealed tight with 36 bolts and placed within the wall of a well-traveled hallway. Nevertheless, some pranksters managed to open it under the cover of secrecy in the early 1980s. Without disturbing the original contents, they placed copies of Playboy and Hustler magazines, two pairs of soiled men’s underwear, and a condom into the mix. Also included were some Twinkie snack foods (which eventually petrified), clip-on ties, the self-help book I’m Ok, You’re Ok, an unopened letter to singer Linda Ronstadt, and a 1980 copy of The Rocket — a monthly tabloid which had recently started publication in Seattle.
Lol.
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