Facing the Luddites, textile workers who smashed mechanized frames in the name of a mythical 'General Ludd', Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act in 1812, making machine-breaking a capital crime. The poet Lord Byron devoted his very first speech in the House of Lords to opposing it, in vain. The crackdown was harsh: Luddites were hanged or transported to Australia. Their anger was aimed less at technology than at the wage cuts it made possible.
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.