It’s the Fourth of July, and depending on who you ask, it’s either the semiquincentennial, the bisesquicentennial, the sestercentennial, or the bicenquinquagenary. Or, you know, the 250th anniversary of the country.

I confess, fellow puzzler, when I was planning ahead for July’s posts, I struggled with what to write for today. I didn’t feel inspired to create a puzzle around the anniversary, and for reasons political, moral, and also quite personal, I didn’t exactly feel in a celebratory mood when I thought of the 4th.

So I instead cast my mind back to the bicentennial, researching events and celebrations held for the 200th anniversary of the country, hoping for inspiration to strike.

And I fell down a rabbit hole when exploring the subject of time capsules.

Did you know that time capsules go missing with surprising regularity?

A time capsule was buried in the 1950s at the San Francisco International Airport. It was lost, and then rediscovered during construction in the 1970s. It was lost AGAIN, and then rediscovered again in the 1990s, close to the original intended year of the time capsule’s reopening in 2000. Serendipity.

In my perusings, a single line caught my attention:

And nestled among 150 items in the Chicago City Bank and Trust Company’s sealed-and-locked-away “Time Capsule 1976-2076” is a crossword puzzle

A crossword included in a hundred-year time capsule? One that would be halfway through its journey to the future on July 4, 2026?

I wondered what crossword was chosen to represent the world at the time.

So I immediately went on the hunt for more information.

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First, I wanted to establish that the time capsule’s location was still currently known. After reading about all those lost and misplaced ones, this felt like the prudent place to start.

With the assistance of Annika Kohrt, Public Services Librarian at the Chicago History Museum, I found the location of the original bank in question at 815 West 63rd Street, Chicago.

The building is now a Chicago Landmark, as well as the home of the Englewood branch of US Bank. After talking to several very helpful and probably confused bank employees about the time capsule, I spoke to the bank manager, Tiffany, who kindly confirmed that the time capsule is intact in the bank’s vault.

I couldn’t ask for further details without sounding like I was plotting a heist, so I tabled my inquiry there.

So the time capsule still exists. Excellent!

Annika also provided me with some newspaper articles about the time capsule — librarians are the BEST, seriously — which indicated that a copy of The Chicago Defender newspaper was included in the time capsule.

The Chicago Defender is a remarkable institution.

This weekly African-American newspaper was founded in 1905, reporting on important issues of the day, railing against Jim Crow laws and segregation practices. Langston Hughes, Ida B. Wells, and Gwendolyn Brooks were among the important voices who wrote for the Defender over the years.

It became a daily newspaper in 1956, serving as a crucial voice during the Civil Rights Movement, and wouldn’t return to its weekly format for over 50 years. It is still publishing to this day in online format.

By the time the bicentennial rolled around, the Defender had celebrated 70 years as one of the most influential and outspoken periodicals in the country.

And, in fact, two different issues were included in the time capsule: the 70th anniversary edition of the Chicago Defender and the 1976 Bicentennial edition of the Chicago Defender.

With the assistance of Tony, one of the Ask a Librarian pros from the Chicago Public Library, I learned quite a bit about the Defender.

Including the fact that the Defender didn’t have a regular puzzle section in the paper.

I was barking up the wrong tree.

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I was not deterred, though. With the deft help of capable researchers like Annika and Tony — I swear, the Internet is borderline unsearchable at this point, thank ALL the gods for librarians — I had confirmed the time capsule’s location, current status, and some of its contents.

So I started poring through newspaper archives and articles related to “Time Capsule 1976-2076.”

And as you might expect, Midwest newspapers gave quite a bit of coverage to the time capsule. Citizens had months to suggest items to place inside. Those items were then on display for the public to enjoy, before being sealed away that December to await the citizens of Chicago in 2076.

Items inside included:

• a letter penned by the late Mayor Daley to the people of 2076
• a sheet of Chicago Bears 1976 season tickets
• documents from Englewood Hospital and other crucial public services
• half-hour recordings of radio shows about the time capsule’s creation
• albums from Johnny Mathis (“I Only Have Eyes For You”) and Sammy Davis Jr. (“Now,” featuring “Candy Man”).

Items cataloguing Chicago’s history past and present, as well as recipes, magazines, and books recounting the histories of various industries and cultural institutions, were also included to provide a snapshot of life at the time.

And among all those items, I finally spotted the item that had thus far eluded me in my historical deep dive into the time capsule:

“Dell Publishing Company – Crossword Puzzles, December, 1976.”

I’ve reached out to my friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles to see if a copy of this magazine is in their archives. If so, I’ll update this post and let you know!

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Oh, one more thing.

In my research, I finally found the full article containing the brief snippet that inspired this post, and I discovered a word had been cut off in the original scan.

The text actually read:

And nestled among 150 items in the Chicago City Bank and Trust Company’s sealed-and-locked-away “Time Capsule 1976-2076” is a crossword puzzle magazine.

A single word could’ve changed my entire approach.

But then again, there’s so much I wouldn’t have learned if that word had been part of my original game plan, so I don’t regret the journey.

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Fifty years from today, the citizens of 2076 Chicago will be celebrating the tricentennial with, among many other symbols of times gone by, a puzzle magazine that is still being published today, and hopefully one that will still be publishing fifty years from now.

Those folks will probably never read these words.

But I want to thank them anyway.

I want to thank the people who put together that time capsule, and the people who will be opening it, for putting a little bit of feeling back into this particular July 4th for me.

Happy puzzling, everyone.