From the 12th century, England's Exchequer recorded payments on tally sticks: wooden sticks notched to show the sum, then split lengthwise, with each party keeping one half to prevent fraud. The system was only abandoned in 1826. In October 1834, officials decided to burn the old tallies in the furnaces beneath the House of Lords. Overheated, they set the building alight, and most of the Palace of Westminster went up in flames.
Around 2300 BCE, Enheduanna, daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, became high priestess of the Moon god at Ur. She composed hymns to the goddess Inanna and put her name to them. She is the oldest person identified as the author of a literary work, about 1,500 years before Homer.
Squeeze Earth's 4.5 billion years into a single 24-hour day. Homo sapiens shows up around 11:59:54 p.m., roughly six seconds before midnight. All of written history, from Sumerian tablets to today, fits into the final tenth of a second. A cosmic blink.