00:00 About three months ago, the base of the Kosciuszko Monument here at West Point was removed because
00:04 it had some structural damage.
00:06 In the process of that removal, an employee of the West Point Association of Graduates
00:10 discovered a 12 by 12 by 13 inch box underneath the marble face of the monument.
00:16 We are guessing that is a sort of artifact or what we would call today a time capsule
00:21 put there when the monument was completed in 1829.
00:25 The box is approximately one cubic foot in volume.
00:28 It is made entirely of lead with solder seams.
00:32 We did x-ray the box.
00:35 Because it's a lead box, we had to turn the power up really high on that x-ray machine.
00:39 So unfortunately, we weren't able to capture the level of detail that we wanted to, but
00:43 we were able to determine that there are some anomalies on the interior.
00:49 So that is promising.
00:51 Let's see what's in that box.
00:52 You bet.
00:58 What do we see?
00:59 Nothing quite yet.
01:00 I just set it to one side over there.
01:01 There you go.
01:02 It's empty.
01:03 Oh, shh.
01:04 The box didn't quite meet expectations.
01:31 There is a layer of silt.
01:33 That's what we were removing here that settled in the bottom.
01:36 As I mentioned before, the bottom had bowed out.
01:39 It appears to have been from moisture penetration.
01:43 We don't want to think that they went to all the trouble to put this box in the monument
01:48 and not put anything in it.
01:50 So what we're going to do is we're going to collect all the silt at a later point.
01:55 We'll screen it through a fine mesh screen to see if we can find any remains in it and
01:59 determine what, if anything, was in here.
02:01 Hopefully it was something small and organic that may have come apart over time, but we're
02:06 just not certain.
02:07 We did, however, Mike, found on the lid here there is a stamp from the manufacturer, E.W.
02:13 Bank, New York.
02:15 That name does not ring a bell to me.
02:17 So that is another clue that we might be able to track down and find some records about
02:21 what was going on here with the time capsule.
02:24 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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