A decree of November 1793 divided the day into 10 hours of 100 minutes, each made up of 100 seconds. One revolutionary hour was therefore 2 hours 24 minutes long, and noon struck at 5. Clockmakers produced decimal dials, but people never took to it: made compulsory in September 1794, the system was suspended in April 1795. The Republican calendar, by contrast, lasted until 1806.
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.