Almost 300 years ago, someone implanted what now might be the world's oldest time capsule, hidden high upon the pregnant finial of a church spire in Poland.

It was announced by the Museum of Wschowa [Ssh-hova] Land on Thursday, Sept. 21, that the round copper bulb atop St. Stanislaus parish church in the small town of Wschowa was brought down and was found to contain four separate parcels from three distinct centuries.

The oldest and most impressive was a heavily corroded copper box with the date 1726 embossed on the lid, closed by a hook. A smaller box made of sheet iron decorated with a pointed cross was found attached.

Additional dates were stamped into the larger box with 1786 on the bottom and 1884 in three locations, including on the lid, demarcating when the capsule was believed to have been opened before.

Some of the boxes' contents were dated nearly 300 years old. The researchers had found a literal time capsule that had been placed at several different times, starting from when a reconstruction had repaired the church after a fire in the late 1600s.

The large box contained finely scripted, yet somewhat damaged, papers sealed with official wafers. Parcels from 1726, 1786, 1884, and 1914 were included in the larger box, as well as a pair of relics:

Two reliquaries, from 1884 and 1914, with descriptions indicated their contents to be of soil collected from the grave of St. John of Nepomuk.

A gunshot appears to have damaged the larger copper box and some of its contents, according to the museum, as a bullet hole was found in the bottom and a small-caliber bullet inside, no less.

The adjacent smaller iron container held some old coins from the 1800s wrapped in newspapers in two separate packages.