Capsule
Mason Gary Stavros covers the head of a lion statue before hoisting it to the top of the Old State House in Boston in November. Across the street at the Massachusetts Statehouse, workers dug up a 219-year-old time capsule Thursday. Reuters

Some museum experts in Boston are in for an exciting weekend, as they plan to X-ray a just-discovered time capsule that was buried by United States forefathers Paul Revere and Samuel Adams in 1795. The cigar box-sized copper container could hold papers and coins from the 1600s. It's the oldest unopened time capsule in the country, USA Today reported.

Workers discovered the time capsule Thursday while trying to fix a water leak at the Massachusetts Statehouse. A Boston Museum of Fine Arts conservator spent hours Thursday carefully removing it from the cornerstone, where Revere and Adams placed it during construction of the building in 1798. As the conservator chiseled away at the mortar, five coins spilled out, likely thrown in by the Revolutionary War men as good luck, USA Today reported.

The time capsule, green from copper oxidation and covered in plaster, was said to be in good condition. It's been exposed once before, on a humid day in 1855, and was replaced. Still, Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin said he was hopeful the contents were OK.

"We have to see what held up since that time," he told the Associated Press. "That's the biggest question we have right now: Are the contents in good condition or not?"

The copper box isn't actually the original one. Officials replaced it and washed some of the items with acid when they unearthed it in 1855.

"It's heavy," conservator Pamela Hatchfield told reporters. "I feel happy and relieved and excited and really interested to see what's in this box."

Thursday's discovery comes roughly two months after the Bostonian Society published the contents of another time capsule, buried in 1901. It contained 51 items, including army and political buttons, nails, business cards, photographs and letters, according to the society's blog post.

People won't have to wait much longer to find out what's in Thursday's time capsule. The contents were due to be revealed to the public after the museum examined the time capsule this weekend.

"Obviously, when we talk about the original box being presided over by then-Gov. Sam Adams, Paul Revere, it's pretty significant," Galvin told the AP. "I'm very fond of saying ... that the history of Massachusetts is the history of America, and it's very true...This is another evidence of that."

RELATED STORIES