In 146 BCE, at the end of the Third Punic War, Rome razed Carthage. But no ancient text says its land was salted so that nothing would grow again. In 1986, historian R. T. Ridley showed that this detail only appears in modern times, before spreading widely in the 20th century. The irony: just over a century after destroying it, Rome refounded Carthage, which became one of the largest cities in the Roman West.
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.