A visitor at the Vermilion Heritage Museum in Alberta, Canada managed to do something that locksmiths were unable to do for over 40 years. Stephen Mills was with his family when their guide showed them a large safe that was taken from the town's old Brunswick Hotel, which closed in 1977.
The safe was donated to the museum in the mid-1980s, but nobody could remember the three digit combination or what was stored inside. The museum enlisted the help of safecrackers and locksmiths to try to open it, but they all failed.
"We had a conference call going with several of us standing around the safe, trying what the locksmith was telling us," Tom Kibblewhite, a longtime volunteer at the museum told the CBC. "But we tried all the combinations that she gave us with no results. And her response was that probably it sat so long, we may have got the right combination, but the gears weren't falling into place fast enough."
Over the years visitors have tried their luck at opening the mysterious safe, but nobody was able to get it open, at least not until Mills showed up.
"I put in 20-40-60, three times right, three times left, one time right. Tried it, it's like, oh my God."
There wasn't anything valuable inside the safe, just a pad filled with restaurant orders, a payslip from 1977 and some documents relating to the final days of the hotel.
The curators at the museum have no plans on closing the safe and are using duct tape to ensure it won't lock again.
"Right now, we've just kept a piece of duct tape over the holes where the pins go in to close it," Kibblewhite said. "We're probably going to keep it open."
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