Students in Gloucester County Open Time Capsule from 1995

A group of second and third graders from Thomas Jefferson Elementary School in Washington Township explored a 25 year old time capsule this week.

The time capsule, put into the ground in a memorial cemetery at Washington Twp. Municipal Complex on October 12, 1995, was unearthed on Monday, exactly a quarter of a century after it was buried there. It was created by Thomas Jefferson Elementary teachers Diane Rickenbach and Leona Aronovitch.

Current Washington Twp. Mayor Joann Gattinelli was on hand for the exhumation, as was Gerald Luongo, mayor when the time capsule went underground in '95, and Thomas Jefferson Elementary's Principal Gary Breen, NJ.com reports.

A bronze plate on the front of the brick structure that housed the time capsule left instructions to unseal it on October 12, 2020. It's a time Leona Aronovitch told NJ.com she and her students thought would be very different from how it actually is now. “We thought maybe we’d be in Mars,” she said.

Some of the items pulled from the capsule included a 'Class of 1995' t-shirt, a yearbook, photos, newspapers, and school projects. All were said to be in very good condition, according to NJ.com.

If I had built a time capsule from 1995, I would surely have put in a CD copy of Mariah Carey's Daydream album, a flannel shirt to represent the grunge era, one of my OG radio demos, a VHS tape of the movie Seven ('What's in the box?!'), and a headline documenting the start of the O.J. Simpson trial.

Can you imagine what would go into a 2020 time capsule? A photo of coronavirus. A face mask. A COVID-19 test. Video of the death of George Floyd. Ug, someone help me out here and find me a rainbow.

SOURCES: NJ.com