LONDON — For many, Diana, Princess of Wales, epitomizes the 1990s era. Recently, a time capsule she buried nearly 35 years ago was unearthed, unveiling a plethora of memorabilia.
The capsule was placed inside a wall at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London in 1991 with the help of two children who won a TV competition.
The capsule contained artifacts from the pre-internet era, such as an early pocket TV, a Kylie Minogue CD, a solar-powered calculator, and a copy of The Times newspaper.
The selection of items was made through a competition organized by the long-running British children’s TV program “Blue Peter.” Viewers decided on eight items that represented 1990s life. Despite some moisture damage, the items remained identifiable.
The capsule wasn’t intended to be opened for centuries, but plans changed as the hospital is demolishing old buildings to construct a new children’s cancer center.
The CD was chosen by David Watson, who was 11 years old at the time and from Devon in western England. He also selected a sheet of recycled paper and a European passport.
Sylvia Foulkes, then aged 9 from Norwich in eastern England, chose a collection of British coins, a container with five tree seeds, and a snowflake hologram.
It’s unclear what the children, who would both now be in their 40s, thought of the opening.
The hospital asked staff either born in 1991 or already working there in 1991 to help remove the capsule.
One of the latter, senior health play specialist Janet Holmes, said: “It brought back so many memories seeing the pocket TV in there — I had bought one for my husband back in the day, for when he had a break whilst driving his coach around the country. They were very expensive then!”
Anyone born in or after the 1990s may struggle to understand that this coveted gadget — the Casio TV430 — had a 2 inch screen and a battery life of just a few hours.
Australian singer Minogue, then famous in Britain for a string of pop hits as well as her role in the TV soap opera “Neighbours,” is still a major international star.
CDs, however, were then relatively new: they only surpassed cassettes and LPs as the leading music format in the U.S. in 1991.
Great Ormond Street, known as GOSH, is the U.K.’s leading children’s hospital and a major center for pediatric research in Europe. Diana became its president in 1989 and visited multiple times.
Diana was part of the ceremony to lay the foundation stone of the Variety Club Building in 1991 — to mark this she sealed a time capsule in the hospital’s main entrance.
She was following royal tradition: a former Princess of Wales, Alexandria, laid the foundation stone for an older GOSH building in 1872 and also sealed a time capsule. Curiously, however, the hospital said that capsule has still never been found.
GOSH said the new cancer center “will make it easier for clinical teams to develop kinder, more effective treatments, all delivered in a child-focused environment where children can play, learn and be with their family while at hospital.”
While the hospital is run by the taxpayer-funded National Health Service, it still has to raise funds for big projects and the 300 million pound ($403 million) fundraising drive to build the new center is the biggest in its history.
