Killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, Richard III was buried without ceremony in Leicester's Franciscan friary church, demolished in the 16th century. In 2012, University of Leicester archaeologists dug up a council car park built over the site and found a skeleton with a spine curved by scoliosis and a skull marked by battle wounds. Mitochondrial DNA, matched against descendants of his sister, confirmed his identity. He was reburied with great ceremony in 2015.
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.