A Missile-Shaped Time Capsule Triggered a New York City Bomb Scare

On Wednesday, the New York Police Department (NYPD) sent a bomb squad to investigate a "suspicious package" that looked a whole lot like an old bomb that had been unearthed in Manhattan's Flatiron District, Gothamist reports.

The object was first discovered by some construction workers who were digging at a nearby building site, according to New York Daily News. After realizing it looked like an old explosive, they called in the NYPD who sent a bomb squad and evacuated the surrounding buildings.

"We first saw the police. They were screaming and everything," Andres Londono, who was working in the area, told Gothamist. "I was on my lunch break. I looked out the window and they started telling people they had to get out, and they started evacuating all the buildings."

Some residents and workers who were allowed to stay in their buildings near the site captured the chaos from high-rise windows. Many of the photos and videos posted on Twitter show the large missile-shaped object lying in the middle of the street as cops mill about.

But after taking a closer look at the mystery object, the NYPD determined that it was actually just an old time capsule someone had buried beneath 21st Street, according to NY 1. The NYPD issued an all-clear for the area after finding that the giant torpedo was actually just stuffed with a bunch of loose papers—possibly planted by a famous 1980s dance club.

Although it's not totally clear how the missile-shaped time capsule ended up buried in a busy New York street corner, it definitely wasn't another mysterious Nazi war bomb like the one an Idaho woman found sitting in her backyard shed.