In 1306, the Dominican friar Giordano da Pisa said in a sermon that the art of making eyeglasses had been invented 'not yet twenty years' earlier. They therefore appeared in Italy around 1286. For scribes, craftsmen and scholars with failing near vision, it meant years more of reading and working.
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.