In July 1522, the survivors of Magellan's expedition stopped at the Cape Verde islands. According to their log, carefully kept by the chronicler Antonio Pigafetta, it was Wednesday; ashore, they were told it was Thursday. By sailing steadily west, chasing the Sun, they had lived through one fewer day than the people who stayed put. It is the first known record of the shift that the International Date Line handles today.
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.