20 Mind-Bending Facts That Rewrite What We Think We Know

Compress Earth’s history into a single day, and almost everything human beings care about happens after the lights are already low. The planet forms at midnight. Oceans, microbes, oxygen, complex life, fish, plants, dinosaurs, mammals, and ice ages all take their places across the long hours. Modern humans arrive extremely late, close to the end of the final minute before the next midnight. Agriculture, cities, writing, empires, family surnames, printed books, electricity, radio, television, and the internet would occupy only the tiniest flicker near the end.