In 1367, Florence approved a plan for Santa Maria del Fiore that called for a dome more than 40 meters across, though nobody knew how to build it: no known wooden framework could have held it up during construction. The answer came from a competition in 1418, won by Filippo Brunelleschi. From 1420 to 1436, he raised a self-supporting double dome, with bricks laid in a herringbone pattern. It remains the largest masonry dome in the world.
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.