Opening 80-year-Old WWII US Army C-Ration can with original chocolate, coffee, biscuits, and jam inside
A video showcases the opening of an 80-year-old World War II US Army C-Ration can. The can's contents, including chocolate, coffee, biscuits, and jam, appear surprisingly intact and edible. This event highlights how utilitarian items can transform into historical artifacts over time.
- ▪The C-Ration can was designed to provide soldiers with meals during World War II.
- ▪Its contents include chocolate cubes, Nescafé instant coffee, sugar cubes, four biscuits, and a small can of jam.
- ▪The can still retains a tiny key attached to the lid for easy opening in rough conditions.
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Record
| Original publisher | Boing Boing |
| Canonical URL | https://boingboing.net/2026/05/18/opening-80-year-old-wwii-us-army-c-ration-can-with-original-chocolate-coffee-biscuits-and-jam-inside.html |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 19:40:38 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T20:14:56.949Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T20:14:56.949Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | vUMxcB2KtY_u |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Opening 80-year-Old WWII US Army C-Ration can with original chocolate, coffee, biscuits, and jam inside Popkin 12:40 pm Mon May 18, 2026 Photo: Mark Anthony Ray / Shutterstock This fascinating video shows an original World War II–era US Army C-Ration can from the 1940s being opened today, in 2026. Its preserved contents are revealed after roughly 80 years, and the results are surprisingly edible-looking. These olive-drab tins were designed to provide soldiers in the field with a meal, and this particular example still contains a small assortment of wartime provisions. The sealed can contains chocolate cubes, Nescafé instant coffee, sugar cubes, four biscuits, and a small can of jam. These ration kits were engineered for portability and durability.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Boing Boing.
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