At noon on this date in 1938, at the site of what was to be the 1939 New York World’s Fair, a time capsule was buried with much fanfare. It is to be reopened in the year 6939, or 5000 years in the future.

People have buried time capsules for centuries, but the term “time capsule” itself was coined for this particular object, buried on this date 78 years ago, at this World’s Fair. About 35 objects of everyday importance and several microfilms (along with a handheld microfilm reader) of many documents were placed in an airtight container that was placed in a rust- and corrosion-proof metal container, especially created for this capsule to last 5000 years.
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He was an unlikely spy. Perhaps the best spies are supposed to be “unlikely,” unsuspectable, but Nathan Hale probably was too honest to be a spy. Sent by the Continental Army to Lower Manhattan to track and report on British Army movements, he was caught within days of his arrival. Arrested on September 21, 1776, he was executed by hanging the next day.

Not one contemporary account has an exact description of the scene on the gallows, because the hanging, which did not follow a trial, was not a public event. All of the contemporary accounts, all written by the British, describe the calm composure of the 21-year-old spy as he faced death, however. What he said was close enough to, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” that that may indeed have been what he said 240 years ago today. (Some millennials have offered this as America’s first-ever mic drop.)
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I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?—Virginia O’Hanlon, a question published in the New York Sun on September 21, 1897

Virginia O’Hanlon, an eight-year-old girl, asked her father one day in the summer of 1897 whether Santa Claus is real.

He suggested she write to the city newspaper, the New York Sun, so she did. Virginia wrote: “I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”

Francis Pharcellus Church, a 58-year-old editor who had been a Civil War reporter and had not married and was not a father, was tasked with composing a reply to Virginia.

On this date in 1897, Church’s unsigned reply, “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus,” was published in the Sun. It remains the most widely reprinted newspaper editorial in history. It is perhaps the only one that has been set to music. He wrote:
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